An Old Coast

There’s an old coast, an old coast

Bound by a wild sea,

Where I found myself, but travelled lost

For a year in every three;

Bitter the winds that blow the coast

For a year in every three.

 

The skies and cliffs are iron grey

And the gulls are blind in flight,

There isn’t a way from the old coast

To be found by the moon’s light,

When you’re caught in need at the old coast

And the moon is dearth’s delight.

 

I travelled north, I travelled south

In search of a friendly face,

But never an eye would look on me,

Nor check my troubled pace;

Lonely it was, and grim at mouth

I drift my measured trace.

 

I swore I’d leave that old coast

To look for the way I’d been,

The sea was still and the air was chill,

No roads lay in-between;

Time and again I found no sign

Of the man that I might have been.

 

So if you should come to an old coast

Bound by a wild sea,

Where never an eye will look on you

For a year in every three,

There’s nothing to find but loneliness

And the storms that rage in me!

 

David Lewis Paget