Loss of the Steamship Florizel (Poem by Edwin John Dove Pratt)

Loss of the Steamship Florizel

By Edwin John Dove Pratt

What changed thy face from that of yesterday,

    Great Sea! that with thy mothering hands outspread

And smiling on our common life, didst lay

    The table covers for our daily bread?

To-day, held by the thresh of iron shocks

    Within the vortex of a lightless fate,

Thy hands are tearing seaweed on the rocks,

    And thou — a stark and wild inebriate.