A Sailor’s Wife

Into port when the sun was setting
Rode the ship that bore my love,
Over the breakers wildly fretting,
Under the skies above.

Down to the beach I ran to meet him;
He would come as he had said:
And he came—in a sailor’s coffin,
Dead!......

O the ships of the sea! the lovers
Torn by them apart!...
The tide has nothing now to tell me,
The breakers break my heart!