Explore "The Alice Jean" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
One moonlit night a ship drove in,
A ghost ship from the west,
Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller, / Like a mermaid drest / In long green weed and barnacles: / She beached and came to rest.
All the watchers of the coast / Flocked to view the sight, / Men and women streaming down / Through the summer night, / Found her standing tall and ragged / Beached in the moonlight.
Then one old woman looked and wept / "The 'Alice Jean'? But no! / The ship that took my Dick from me / Sixty years ago / Drifted back from the utmost west / With the ocean's flow?
"Caught and caged in the weedy pool / Beyond the western brink, / Where crewless vessels lie and rot / in waters black as ink. / Torn out again by a sudden storm / Is it the 'Jean', you think?"
A hundred women stared agape, / The menfolk nudged and laughed, / But none could find a likelier story / For the strange craft. / With fear and death and desolation / Rigged fore and aft.
The blind ship came forgotten home / To all but one of these / Of whom none dared to climb aboard her: / And by and by the breeze / Sprang to a storm and the "Alice Jean" / Foundered in frothy seas.