There's a storm lashing the sea <br />Raging winds whip the salt waves <br />While a curtain of rain, makes it difficult to see <br />A sailing merchant ship is running close to shore <br />As close as her master dares <br />The lookout clinging to the crows nest <br />Cries, I can see a light. We're saved <br />But unknown to him, the light he has seen <br />Is a lantern hanging from the neck of a goat <br />So the man at the wheel, turns the ship <br />Even more shoreward, swept in by the tide <br />Till with a crashing of splintering wood <br />She heaves herself up on the jagged black rocks <br />The crew try to save themselves, but most are drowned <br />Yet there are men on the beach, waiting <br />They do not try to help, but if any man <br />Makes it ashore, he faces death by cudgel <br />For the men that led the ship astray <br />To end her life on those sharp teeth <br />Are Cornish wreckers, who will now wait <br />Until the angry storm abates <br />Then uncaring, they'll leave the bodies <br />To be washed out to sea at the next high tide <br />While they row out to the ship, to grab waht they can <br />Before she finally slips off the rocks and sinks under<br /><br />Marilyn Shepperson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wreckers/
