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  • A Prayer for Youth at Sea
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A Prayer for Youth at Sea

Isobel Wylie Hutchison

Captain ! There is no harbour that is sure
Save Thy sure harbour. Over minèd seas
Gathers the dreadful dawn that shall inure
Our hearts to bloodshed, our pale sympathies
Distorting horribly in this its red
And wild reflection. Blind we steer the blind.
The cruising stars are darkened overhead,
No Pharos beacons us, no plummets find
The depths of this uncharted waste of war.
Perchance thine evening mariners may hold
The day well spent, nor fear the darkling bar.
They have lost count of the stars; their eyes are old;
But some in the young night can count them all,
Captain! Remember these when the dark shall fall.


Isobel Wylie Hutchison

from Lyrics From West Lothian (1916)

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holder of Isobel Wylie Hutchison’s privately published poems; the SPL would be pleased to have any information to further the search.

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evening remembrance the navy World War I
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Isobel Wylie Hutchison1889 - 1982

Born in the late 1880s, Isobel Wylie Hutchison overcame the constraints that the age, her class, and her own personality placed upon her, to become a solo adventurer in the far North, an accomplished plant collector and a successful...
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