storms a-weather, rocks a-lee
With storms a-weather, rocks a-lee,
The dancing skiff puts forth to sea.
The lone dissenter in the blast
Recoils before the sight aghast.
But she, although the heavens be black,
Holds on upon the starboard tack,
For why ? although to-day she sink,
Full safe she sails in printer’s ink,
And though to-day the seamen drown,
My cut shall hand their memory down.
ex Moral Emblems and other poems written and illustrated with woodcuts by Robert Louis Stevenson (1921) [ here ]
but
I was fortunate in seafaring when I was shipwrecked.
Zeno of Cition
ex Hans Blumenberg. Shipwreck with Spectator : Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence (1996)
*
23 July 2012
tags: ink; shipwreck; Robert Lewis Stevenson, Moral Emblems (1921); Hans Blumenberg