The Veil, and Other Poems

Chapter 45: THE GALLIASS

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About This Book

The collection assembles short lyric and narrative poems that blend pastoral observation, eerie wonder, and quiet melancholy. Many pieces evoke nighttime or liminal settings, where imagination and memory animate ordinary scenes into encounters with fairies, spectres, or uncanny beauty. Voices range from whimsical to mournful, moving through snapshots of nature, domestic objects, and human regret, while formal restraint and vivid sensory detail create dreamlike moods. Recurring concerns include the power of perception, the edge between waking and dreaming, and the consolation or peril found in remembrance and fancy.

THE GALLIASS

'TELL me, tell me,

Unknown stranger,

When shall I sight me

That tall ship

On whose flower-wreathed counter is gilded, Sleep?'

'Landsman, landsman,
Lynx nor kestrel
Ne'er shall descry from
Ocean steep
That midnight-stealing, high-pooped galliass, Sleep.'

'Promise me, Stranger,
Though I mark not
When cold night-tide's
Shadows creep,
Thou wilt keep unwavering watch for Sleep.'

'Myriad the lights are,
Wayworn landsman,
Rocking the dark through
On the deep:
She alone burns none to prove her Sleep.'