The Dragon Ship Poem by David Lewis Paget

I knew she was Scandinavian
With those plaits in her flaxen hair,
And her eyes were such a brilliant blue
They were quite beyond compare,
I’d watch her make her way to the beach
Down the stony clifftop way,
But didn’t know she was waiting for him
Till I saw them come that day.

I doubt if she understood our tongue
Though trapped on an English shore,
I’d greet her as I’d greet anyone
With a wave and a smile, for sure,
But she’d bow her head, and hurry away
Determined we shouldn’t meet,
I little knew where her secret lay
Though I’d pass her along the street.

She seemed to live in a cottage that
Had been tumbling down for years,
Up on a tuft of poverty grass
That time had dismayed, and cursed,
Her clothes, designed in a northern clime
Must have been hand-sewn with twine,
The colours faded, the patterns run
But to me, she was more than fine.

I watched her all through the Autumn as
She wandered along the beach,
She always stopped at the same old spot
Where the rocks had formed a breach,
The waves would part as they hit the rocks
And a plume sprayed in the air,
Forming a mist of droplets that would
Glisten, all through her hair.

Then winter came in a fury with
Its grey and its fretful skies,
And storms were lashing the seafront
Keeping us home, those who were wise,
But she still ventured abroad some days
Though the wind would take her breath,
And make her stagger along the path
Till I thought she’d catch her death.

Something drove her along that path
For she seemed to be obsessed,
The days were dark, you could barely see,
You’d think that those rocks were blessed,
She’d come back up in an hour or so
With her clothes so soaked and wet,
That once I called, and she came right in,
The first time that we’d met.

She couldn’t answer my questions though,
She spoke in a foreign tongue,
One that was heard in northern climes
Back when the world was young,
And when she dried, she walked away
But pointed out to the sea,
And mouthed a single word, a name,
‘Brynjar’, it had seemed to me.

That night a terrible storm began,
A storm like I’d never seen,
With dense black rolling thunder clouds
That lightning lit, between,
I watched as she wandered out once more
And I looked down to the shore
And noticed a strange old sailing ship
Like I’d seen in a book, before.

The prow was high, and a dragon’s head
Stared snarling out through the hail,
A huge square sail was fluttering,
Torn in the raging gale,
And at the prow a warrior, who
Clung onto an oar and spar,
While from the shore, a sudden scream
Had cut through the air, ‘Brynjar! ’

The ship was swept on the jagged rocks
That had formed a solid breach,
And shattered, as it had broken its back,
To spill its men on the beach,
But Brynjar, lost on the self-same rocks
Caused her to scream, at last,
Just as that scene had faded out
A long lost scene from the past.

I never once saw that girl again,
It’s now that I think I know,
How desperate things return sometimes
In a sort of afterglow,
For Brynjar’s ship was a Dragon ship
From a thousand years before,
Whose Viking crew came for who knows who,
Trapped on the English shore.

28 September 2015