Explore "The Shipwreck" by William Falconer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Awhile the mast, in ruins dragged behind, / Balanced the impression of the helm and wind; / The wounded serpent agonized with pain / Thus trails his mangled volume on the plain: / But now, the wreck dissevered from the rear, / The long reluctant prow began to veer: / While round before the enlarging wind it falls, / "Square fore and aft the yards," the master calls; / "You timoneers her motion still attend, / For on your steerage all our lives depend: / So steady! meet her! watch the blast behind, / And steer her right before the seas and wind. " / "Starboard again! " the watchful pilot cries; / "Starboard! " the obedient timoneer replies: / Then back to port, revolving at command, / The wheel rolls swiftly through each glowing hand.
The ship, no longer foundering by the lee, / Bears on her side the invasions of the sea; / All lonely o'er the desert waste she flies, / Scourged on by surges, storms, and bursting skies: / As when enclosing harpooners assail / In hyperborean seas the slumbering whale, / Soon as their javelins pierce his scaly side, / He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide; / And racked all o'er with lacerating pain, / He flies remote beneath the flood in vain-