A Wool Fleet Chorus

Cicely Fox Smith 1882 (Lymm, Cheshire) – 1954 (Bow, Devon)



Fare you well, you Sydney girls, time for us to go!
The Peter's at the fore truck, and five thousand bales below,
We've a dozen shellbacks forrard, and a skipper hard as nails,
And we're bound for old England and the January sales!

Soon we'll leave the Snares behind, blusterous and strong
Up'll come the Westerlies and hustle her along:
Running like a driven deer through the thundering gales,
Racing under royals for the January Sales!

Old Cape Stiff 'll drop astern, like a blinking dream,
Sleet and snow and crashing seas, fog and ice'll seem,
Snoring through the Tropics with a Trade that never fails,
Nor'ard on a bowline for the January sales!

Then the girls'll get her towrope, and she'll smell the land again,
And she'll reel the knots off steady as a blessed railway train,
Till seventy days from Sydney Heads the Lizard light she hails -
First to the Channel for the January sales!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

51 sec read
94

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABB CCBB DDBB XXBB
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 885
Words 160
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4

Cicely Fox Smith

Cicely Fox Smith (1 February 1882 – 8 April 1954) was an English poet and writer. Born in Lymm, Cheshire and educated at Manchester High School for Girls, she briefly lived in Canada, before returning to the United Kingdom shortly before the outbreak of World War I. She settled in Hampshire and began writing poetry, often with a nautical theme. Smith wrote over 600 poems in her life, for a wide range of publications. In later life, she expanded her writing to a number of subjects, fiction and non-fiction. For her services to literature, the British Government awarded her a small pension. more…

All Cicely Fox Smith poems | Cicely Fox Smith Books

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