On the eighteenth of October we lay in Bantry Bay, <br />All ready to set sail, with a fresh and steady gale: <br />A fortnight and nine days we in the harbour lay, <br />And no breeze ever reached us or strained a single sail. <br />Three ships of war had we, and the great guns loaded all; <br />But our ships were dead and beaten that had never feared a foe. <br />The winds becalmed around us cared for no cannon ball; <br />They locked us in the harbour and would not let us go. <br /> <br />On the nineteenth of October, by eleven of the clock, <br />The sky turned black as midnight and a sudden storm came on-- <br />Awful and sudden--and the cables felt the shock; <br />Our anchors they all broke away and every sheet was gone. <br />The guns fired off amid the strife, but little hope had we; <br />The billows broke above the ship and left us all below. <br />The crew with one consent cried 'Bear further out to sea,' <br />But the waves obeyed no sailor's call, and we knew not where to go. <br /> <br />She foundered on a rock, while we clambered up the shrouds, <br />And staggered like a mountain drunk, wedged in the waves almost. <br />The red hot boiling billows foamed in the stooping clouds, <br />And in that fatal tempest the whole ship's crew were lost. <br />Have pity for poor mariners, ye landsmen, in a storm. <br />O think what they endure at sea while safe at home you stay. <br />All ye that sleep on beds at night in houses dry and warm, <br />O think upon the whole ship's crew, all lost at Bantry Bay.<br /><br />John Clare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bantry-bay/
