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136 THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF |
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THE PHANTOM SHIP
Scene, a winter night, Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, iSqi
OVER moving water and surges white Which no star illumines and no moonlight, A ship comes shoreward sailing, without wind blown To a Northern strand of Eri from a land unknown.
" Keeper of the beacon that warns from Fannet's coast, Say if there went by you a vessel like a ghost, And told she by signal her port and her name?" "The weird ship you ask for not this way came."
" Watchers o'er the billows from sea-girt Tor-I,
Say if at early night any ship went by ?
And came she from the Northland, or came she from
the West? Or rose she like a phantom from Ocean's gray breast ? "
" We saw ere utter darkness gloomed on our isle, When the sea in twilight silver glimmered awhile; The gulls rise up screeching from their roosts by the
sea As if a ship went by them, but no ship saw we."
The first place we saw her, was at the harbor bar, The light at her mast-head burst like a star; Over whitening surges she moved towards the strand. God that ruleth Ocean, she sailed upon the land7
An old man among us crossed himself in dread : " I alone have seen her, I and others dead. |
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