She lies hard-pressed against the gale, her timbers groan in iron strain,
The combing seas rise up in green and crash across her deck in pain.
Each spar is sheathed in frozen glass, the rigging sings with biting frost,
The foot ropes slick with southern sleet, where many a seaman's grip was lost.
The Horn, that ghost of ocean wrath, now yawns to let her stagger past,
With mainsail brailled and storm jib taut, she rides the line and holds her mast.
No stars to guide, no moon to see, just sleet and roar and raw command,
Yet something deeper steers her keel, a fire born not of mortal hand.
Then, O the glory of the change!, a golden crack, a morning sun,
The storm begins to break and bow, its fury spent, its labour done.
The sea, now stained in amber hues, retreats from rage to weary sigh,
And gulls wheel out from nowhere vast to stitch their arcs across the sky.
Awake! I cry, my cot half-damp, with pillow salt and spirit full,
The timbers gone, the rigging still, yet dreams remain indelible.
Was it the yarn that sparked the wind, or something older in my core?
A voice of blood, a racial pull, that knows the Horn and calls once more.
A pork pie’s remains upon the plate, with pickled onions brave and round,
The kettle hums, the floorboards creak with tales no longer outward-bound.
Yet still I feel that Southern roll, that shift of hull beneath the soul,
And wonder what strange alchemy gives sleep such power and such control.
For somewhere deep beyond the page, beyond the charts or spoken speech,
The sailor's path, though often walked, is laid in dreams within my reach.
And so I bless the storm, the sun, the book, the blood, the briny gleam,
For through them all, I’ve sailed the Horn, on wind and wave and waking dream.
(By John Shenton)