Lost Billingsgate
From Billingsgate the beacons’s flash
No longer stabs the quivering dark,
But fang like breakers foam and gnash
Above its sand bars ribbed and stark.
Where whispering grasses used to grow
And nesting terns their shelter made,
Now snarls the rasping undertow
And breezes mutter - half afraid!
For it has gone like Lyonnesse
Of Arthur’s reign - enchanted realm
Of dreamy eyed forgetfulness
That saw the ocean overwhelm
Her shores, till e’en the towers were drowned
Where Merlin spun his evil spells,
And fishers startle - when the sound
Wells upward as from sunken bells!
Yes, Billingsgate is lost to view
Beneath the all engulfing sea,
The lonely Isle the Pilgrims knew -
But still it lives in memory.
And sometimes in the dead of night
We hear the shoal bemoan its fate
Clothed in a shroud of breakers white -
The ghost of vanished Billingsgate!