He’d lain off the island just a week,
It was really only a reef,
That ****** up out of the waters
Ninety miles from Tenerife.
It didn’t show up on a local map
And he thought he’d heard it said,
‘Be sure, if you think of sailing west
That you miss the Isle of the Dead.’
On the higher part was a grove of trees
He explored when he went ashore,
And hidden deep in the foliage was
A house, not seen before.
It was made of wood, and covered in vines
That acted as camouflage,
It couldn’t be seen ‘til you came up close,
And stood with the door ajar.
He thought it must be deserted, though
A garden was weeded out,
And then, as he had approached the door
He was pulled up short, by a shout.
‘Who’s this, who enters my private grounds,
Who’s this, who plays with my head?
We never have visitors here, you know,
For this is the Isle of the Dead!’
He turned, was facing a sprightly girl
With a mass of auburn hair,
She wore a costume of paw paw leaves
That had made him stand and stare,
Her eyes reflected the brightest blue
Of the ocean, out in the bay,
And her mouth affected the slightest pout
As he wondered what to say.
A woman came through the cottage door
And she said, ‘Come in, Narreen,
We never talk to the strangers, for
You don’t know where they’ve been.’
Her manner was quite unfriendly as
She gestured to the shore,
‘You’d better be making way, my friend,’
Then shut the makeshift door.
He slept on his vessel every night
But he came ashore at dawn,
Hoping to get the briefest sight
Of the girl, for his heart was torn.
He hesitated to call it love
But it grew, each time he saw,
Her figure appear from the grove of trees,
Or saunter along the shore.
She finally came to talk to him
And squatted to hear him tell,
Tales of the wondrous world out there
Of jewels and gold as well,
Her eyes grew brighter with every tale
And he said, ‘You should come with me,
We’ll sail on the balmy Autumn swell
And you’ll see the world for free.’
Her sister came to the beach one day
And she took the girl back home,
‘I think that it’s time you sailed away,
We haven’t the need to roam.’
But he came ashore the following day
And he lured the girl to his boat,
She seemed surprised at the size of it
And the fact that it could float.
He tried to sooth, as he raised the sail
‘We’ll just go out for a spin,’
But she was suddenly nervous, and
She asked that they go back in.
He thought that he’d made the girl his own
As they sailed from the bay, at last,
But then he noticed the withered crone
Who clung, in death, to the mast!
David Lewis Paget