Uriel Mont / Pexels

• St. Andrew’s Eve
• The last night of November 
• All dreaming as I lay, 
• I saw a fisher toiling 
• In stormy seas and grey, — 

• A glimmering seine-net casting 
• In foam as white as wool . . . 
• And sometimes it came empty, 
• And sometimes it came full. 

• That port that fisher hailed from 
• Was the port of Heaven above: 
• The shining net he cast there 
• Was the net of Christ His love. 

• That seine it shone like silver 
• Or the Milky Way come down . . . 
• And, oh! the catch he took there 
• Was the souls of those who drown.

• Rosemary
• Rosemary for remembrance,— 
• O gentle memories 
• Of hours whose fragrance is like flowers 
• In olden pleasaunces! 
• When all the birds go South again 
• And all the laughter’s o’er, 
• Rosemary for remembrance 
• Of days that are no more! 

• Rosemary for remembrance
• Of summer posies done,— 
• And scarlet for midsummer joy 
• And gold for noonday sun. 
• God grant us in autumnal days, 
• When brighter flowers have died, 
• Rosemary for remembrance 
• And dreams for eventide!

• The Clock with One Finger
• The clock with one finger 
• Was made in the days 
• When time used to linger 
• By leisurely ways— 

• When nobody reckoned 
• (Or so we are told) 
• Each fugitive, second 
• More precious than gold, 

• But the clocks, like the people, 
• Took things as they came, 
• And the chimes in the steeple 
• Said mostly the same: — 

• “Some day — no day — 
• Maybe — one, day — 
• Come day — go day — 
• God — send — Sunday!”

Cicely Fox Smith

Cilely Fox Smith (1882-1954) was an English poet best known for her maritime folk poems and other verse with a nautical theme. In fact, so detailed were her sea poems that some of her readers who were weathered sailors assumed she was herself a sailor — and even a ship’s captain. Many of her poems have been put to music. Later in life, she wrote fiction and non-fiction as well, including a travelogue of her lifetime dream realized —a voyage around the coast of Africa —All the Way Around: Sea Roads to Africa. The British government recognized her efforts by awarding her a lifetime pension.