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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365947" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Great Eastern</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bones of the great and troubled ship<br>Lay under a greying sky, <br>I'd travelled on up to Liverpool<br>To see the monster die, <br>The wreckers were ripping the hull apart, <br>Were opening wounds of old, <br>Not only the bones of a rusty ship<br>But the bones of a tale untold! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">My mind went back those thirty years<br>To the time when we built the ship, <br>When I was a poor, young riveter, <br>Just out on my maiden trip, <br>I'd found some digs in Millwall, <br>Right down in the Isle of Dogs, <br>Where the Thames sweeps on forever<br>In a miasma of mist and fogs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I moved on in with Ted and Jane, <br>The Lamptreys they were called, <br>He was a man of forty years, <br>She was just twenty four, <br>But Ted was grim and serious, <br>While Jane was as light as froth, <br>While he was around, he held her down, <br>I thought her a fluttering moth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She'd laugh and dance, and prance around<br>When Ted was not at home, <br>He liked his pint of Guinness Stout, <br>His beer, a head of foam, <br>He said that he'd worked a mighty thirst<br>For Isambard Brunel, <br>Whose dream of the great Leviathan<br>Rose up from the depths of hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I got me a job with Ted down there, <br>Riveting iron plates, <br>That ship was the first with a double hull<br>With an inner working space, <br>We belted the red-hot rivets in<br>And flattened the ends across, <br>We'd work in pairs, and the light was scarce<br>In the depths of that albatross.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whenever old Ted would seek the pub<br>I'd go on home to Jane, <br>I thought that she must have feelings, <br>But the love that I felt was pain, <br>For I never dared to voice it, though<br>She must have looked in my eyes, <br>To see the way that my feelings lay<br>It was way beyond disguise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then Ted had begun to drink too much, <br>He said it was getting him down, <br>All he could hear were the hammers, <br>Hammers, belting his head around.<br>They chimed all day in his weary head<br>They rang all night in his sleep, <br>Drowned out the sound of our laughter<br>Like an echo relayed from the deep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He belted Jane and he made her cry<br>While I had nothing to say, <br>I thought that I couldn't come in-between<br>A man and his wife that way, <br>She saw my eyes, and they said it all, <br>I'd sit, and begin to grieve, <br>I just couldn't bear the thought that he<br>Might say that I had to leave! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Eastern Company went bust, <br>Went broke in '56, <br>And we were all laid off, until<br>The finances were fixed, <br>We spent some terrible weeks at home, <br>Living on toast and tea, <br>Wondering how to pay the rent<br>And arguing constantly.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They hired us back, began again, <br>But Ted and I were sour, <br>For Jane had begun to talk to me, <br>Ignored him by the hour, <br>We worked down deep in the hull this time<br>But spoke not a friendly word, <br>With just the clash of the hammers as<br>The heat of our tempers soared.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He worked inside, in the inner space<br>As I beat the rivets in, <br>He'd disappear in the iron walls<br>To the clash of the hammer's din, <br>My mind began to play me tricks, <br>My hammer felt like lead, <br>And then as he peered on out one day, <br>I hit him across the head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He fell back into that inner space<br>With neither a scream, nor curse, <br>I knew if I pulled him out again<br>There'd be calls for a horse and hearse.<br>I fitted a whole new iron plate<br>And riveted it in place, <br>Wiped the blood from my hammer, <br>And the sweat from my trembling face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That night, I told poor Jane I'd left him<br>Outside the Crown and Heart, <br>She didn't say much 'til midnight when<br>He hadn't returned to the hearth, <br>For days, she hurried around to seek<br>Her husband in every lane, <br>But only I knew the reason why<br>He'd never come home again! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For months, I hoped and I prayed that<br>She would fall in my loving arms, <br>And weep her sorrows away with me<br>While sharing some of her charms.<br>But Jane was bitter and fretful, she<br>Would glare at me in the dark, <br>And nothing would raise her spirits now, <br>The light had gone from her spark.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The ship had neared completion when<br>I offered my hand to her, <br>'You must have guessed that I love you, Jane? '<br>She turned on me with a curse.<br>'You think to replace my husband? Hah! <br>I wouldn't take you on a whim, <br>For Ted was really my one true love, <br>I'll keep myself true to him! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The ship was launched, and I left that place, <br>I signed as one of the crew, <br>I'd killed a man for a dream, like sand<br>That had trickled my fingers through.<br>I dreamt that Ted was alive, not dead<br>And clanking his length of chain, <br>In the bowels of Brunel's Great Eastern<br>And calling me out, by name! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That ship was cursed from the day it launched, <br>When one of the boilers blew, <br>As it crossed the Atlantic swell it lost<br>A paddle-wheel or two, <br>The rudder snapped at the iron post, <br>A reef put her in tow, <br>I knew full well that the hounds of hell<br>Were trapped there, down below! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I'm old and tired, as I watch the iron<br>Now stripped from the Eastern's side, <br>When suddenly there's a shout goes up: <br>'There's a skeleton inside! '<br>Now back in my lonely boarding house<br>I write this in despair, <br>In death, he waits with a hammer of hate, <br>Ted clanks his chains down there! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">18 February 2010</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=David+Lewis+Paget">David Lewis Paget</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365947" data-title="The Great Eastern de David Lewis Paget" data-description="The bones of the great and troubled ship
Lay under a greying sky, 
I'd travelled on up to Liverpool
To see the monster die, 
The wreckers were ripping the hull apart, 
Were opening wounds of old, 
Not only the bones of a rusty ship
But the bones o..."></div>
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