"The Dead Ship" (A Poem)

From the ferry of Charon to the ill-fated Titanic, nautical vessels have long been a symbol of death and the transition between the realm of the living and the spiritual world.[1] The ship in Lizette Woodworth Reese’s poem “The Dead Ship” can be interpreted this way: an ethereal presence which arrives in the town to claim the narrator’s beloved.

 

The ship came sailing, sailing,

Into our old town –

My love combed out her golden hair;

It fell to the hem of her gown.

Oh, my heart, break! 

 

No master and no crew was hers,

A ship of the dead was she,

And sailing, sailing, sailing –

The folk ran out to see.

Oh, my heart, break!

 

And first they said nor yea, nor nay;

Then some began to weep;

And some did count their little lads,

As a shepherd counts his sheep.

Oh, my heart, break!

 

Oh, sailing, sailing, sailing –

“Whom will it be?” said they;

“She never sails to this our town

But one doth go away.”

Oh, my heart, break! 

 

“Yea, one will go from this our town

And come back nevermore;

Whate’er His will, Lord God is good;”

Thus I at my love’s door.

Oh, my heart, break! 

 

Thereat I turned into the house

And climbed up my love’s stair,

And called her softly – through the dusk

I saw her golden hair.

Oh, my heart, break!

 

Who went away from our old town

And came back nevermore?

It was my love; she lay there dead

Upon the chamber floor.

Oh, my heart break![2]

 

Works Referenced

 

Pickering, David. Dictionary of Superstitions. London: Cassell, 1995. 

 

Reese, Lizette Woodworth. “The Dead Ship.” A Handful of Lavender. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mufflin, and Company, 1891. 42-43.

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[1] Pickering, 235.

[2] Reese, 42-43.