There’s one little boat that never makes a port
There’s one tidy ship that never seeks a lee
The blunt little lightship
The staunch, able lightship
The game, snubby lightship
Anchored out at sea.
When the night’s very still
And the moon rides high,
There’s one strange craft
Gives a hail and stands by.
Though the forms on her decks
Have a look of the dead
Still they warn of a wreck
Or a shoal dead ahead.
It’s the winter-lost Lightship that never found a lee
It’s the tide-driven Lightship that never made a port
It’s the silent-crewed Lightship, the speechless brave Lightship
The ice-covered Lightship
Sunk at sea.
Now when home fires blaze
And the storm is shut out,
And the wind and its ways
Are sea-yarned about;
When the good glass is lifted
In the good pipe smoke
And the good talk has drifted
From the well worn joke....
Toast the one little boat that never makes port!
Sing of the craft that never hunts a lee—
Drink to the lightships, the lonely crews of lightships
The lunging, plunging lightships
Anchored out at sea!
SEPTEMBER NOON.
Upon the warm brick walls the patterns come,
Dim moving likenesses of pensive leaves;
The swallows twitter round the ivied eaves
Late bees in perilous petunias hum;
On the moors, amber grape and bloomy plum,
But here in trim back-yards the apple’s face
Twinkling with dahlias in some latticed place.
The stranger’s foot has gone and all the world
Has settled down to Island ways of peace,
Where the clouds mid-summer caravans cease
Soundlessness on the hills is silver-furled!
Now all faint scents and spice of full increase!
The scarlet pepper pendant on its bush
And late corn leaning on the farmland hush.
Slow wagons trundle with the sea-grass haul,
The crickets, palaced in the golden rod
Begin their strumming; the horse-chestnuts fall
And morning glories on the trellis nod;
Marigold’s velvet turns to pungent pod.
A sea of azure girds the shores around;
The tawny silence mellows till the deep
Steamboat whistle’s sombre-throated sound
Wakens the isle from Indian Summer’s sleep
Then all is bustle and the city’s stir
Once more has come upon the Islander.