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The Song of the Derelict
YE have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
(I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
(A treacherous lover, the sea!)
Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
A hull in the gloom—a quick hail—and a light
And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
From the doom that ye meted to me.
I was sister to Terrible, seventy-four,
(Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!)
And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more
(Alas! for the might of the sea!)
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