While strolling the twilight that blends night and morn,
Silent, and sullen, and feeling forlorn,
Wrapped in the dreary of love unrequite,
I heard a lone melody, reached from the night.
It came to me sad, and with piercing loss dripping,
So painful the soul, what doleful notes sings
That stole it my misery, and halted my drearing,
And curious I, did see what sight brings,
Past foamy waves, and the black-oil sand,
Yond the coast, on the mooring, where an old pier did reach,
Like the withered finger, of some long dead hand,
Where a giant pointed, to show me the man.
He paused his tune, and turned half to face me,
His legs still hanging from the sea-rotted pile
And though I sensed a spirit uninviting,
My legs drew me nearer, to see the man clearer
A hood he had on, and a mustache of grey,
A forehead so furled, that his face did seem clay
Cut by the hands of some woeful carver,
And traced with crevasse like a dying glacier.
His lips still turned in to pinch the air,
Of the melody halted by my own intrusion,
Which by now had led me, the way down the pier.
Who are you I thought, preparing, to say,
But hearing my thought, he answered this way,
A man you could be, a man you might be,
But make no mistake, a man you shouldn’t be.
“Though old I am now, and colorless, grey -
I too strolled this beach, as a young man, astray,
For I had been caught by the sultry hands
Of a love unreturned, that grows stronger when spurned”
For once stood this pier, not crumbled but grand,
Where the greatest ships, did dock and make land.
When there waited just there, afloat in the bay,
A ship that would soon take my love away,
A year, she said, but I knew would be more,
For past the channel there waited galore,
Fame, adventure, and young men what’s more.
So hatched I a plan, to close then that door.
A devilish plot, with fiends I consulted,
To turn back the ship, so the voyage be halted.
For those days a lad here, a great power had,
In the fitting of vessels, and the tending of ships
To lay in a trap,
unknown to the crew,
That’d give them a fright,
to seek land in sight.
To set free the rudder,
in a manner delayed,
So that voyage once started,
would soon be belayed
Three days it would give, to confess her my love,
Renewed this time, with poetry written,
Convince her to stay, to love me, I prayed
With hope in my chest,
I waited the night,
For the wounded ship,
to sail back in sight.
But the captain, decided, to fix her at sea,
And the next evening come, what I saw, cursed me
For down from the north Sea, a gale had been brewing,
And now with no steering that ship kept no bearing
I sat down here, waiting with dread,
To see what my sins, wound cost in the end”
His voice stopped,
and he looked away,
his hooded head,
pointing the way,
And now dreaded I, To see with my eyes,
what sight would bring.
Against the rocks, half a mile up the coast,
A rudderless keel, haunting.
That sound returned, the low breathless whistling,
And broke it my heart, so cold, so damned,
I moved then to see him, to look on his face,
And pierced it my soul, cut me to the bone,
For under that hood, no stranger I met,
But my own youthful visage, looked up for an instant,
I looked away in horror, I sought to awake,
But the old voice returned, and calmly he spake,
Do not live your life, enslaved to a pier
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