The Headland Wreck

There was sadness in his towering form

As he walked the windswept beach,

The clouds were louring overhead

And the weed cast up was deep,

He had to walk where the tide came in

On a narrow strip of sand,

And darting surges caught at his feet

With their floating contraband.

 

The wreck of the ancient ‘Neptune Glyph’

Embedded in drift was there,

Huddled under a looming cliff

With a trace of its last despair,

But rust had eaten its plates away

To the sound of the wheelhouse bell,

Where a Master and his daughter lay

‘Til the ship became a shell.

 

But now he skirted the rusting ship

And he seemed to hear her voice,

The daughter, in her personal hell,

She’d been given little choice:

‘Why did you take me out to sea

To avoid my mother’s plan,

She’d said that we would be leaving you

For you’re such a brutal man!’

 

Then a rumble grew in the rusting hulk

As the wind caught at the stern,

Rattling through the throat of a man

With a sound like someone burned,

‘I had to keep your mother from you

For she’s such an evil witch,

But she sewed a spell for a rising swell

And added the final stitch.’

 

The man on the beach could hear the roar

That rose from the rusted shell,

Of a storm that raged in the world before

And hurried them both to hell.

‘Why did you have to take the life

Of the mother that might have been?’

He cried aloud at the rusting shroud,

‘I’m left adrift in a dream!’

 

A voice replied in a rising scream

Then died away to a croak,

‘I raised the storm, but I didn’t mean

For my daughter dear to choke…’

The man turned back on the way he came

And left with a parting tear,

As a woman up on the headland watched

Him fade, and disappear!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

You may know that the Wreck of the Hesperus is one of my favorites and this is reminiscent of that poem - with its own salt sea flavor and timbre. Well done.

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

Indeed those payments we make for those in charge as it were well done

[Tate Morgan]

Oh man if only ? I wish i could write like this

[Marie]

A ghost ship still haunted by lost souls...

An old story of a child paying the price for her parents'' evil ways...

[R Smith]

a strong tale of the sea and death, sad and lonely are words that seem to leap from the page, another of your inspirations on the hardness of the human heart and the pain it can cause, bravo David :)

[MomzillaNC]

Another great example of your Gothic prowess. You set a very high standard indeed.

[TPK Stories]

Another great tale, David. . .well done. . .