The Long Wait

She sat and stared from the window ledge,

She sat and stared at the sea,

Was sitting all through my childhood there

Since Eighteen fifty-three,

They said that she’d only stand upright

When a sail came into the bay,

When a ship came back from the Indies, or

Returned from Mandalay.

 

Nobody knew what she did in there,

She knitted, or she sewed,

Perhaps she was sat embroidering

As she watched the old sailroad,

They say she looked for a purple sail

Run up at the mizzen mast,

A sign that a certain Captain Hale

Had sailed on home at last.

 

She had a gentle and kindly face

I remembered from my youth,

But time went on and her face had shone

With tears, to tell the truth,

Her beauty gradually faded as

The years, they took their toll,

And sadness leached from her pale blue eyes

Before the house was sold.

 

A ship sailed into the harbour on

A warm spring afternoon,

A tattered sail at the mizzen that

Had lost its purple bloom,

The Captain wandered along the shore

From out where the sea was calm,

And stopped to gaze at a window,

But with a brunette on his arm.

 

He shook his head for a moment

As at a distant memory,

One of a thousand left behind

In the years that he’d spent at sea,

His eyes were held for a moment by

The eyes at the window pane,

But then he turned to the young brunette,

And went on his way again.

 

I bought the house when the sign went up

Though the agent said, ‘You’re sick!

I wouldn’t be touching that tumbledown,

It’s just a pile of brick.

Nobody’s been in there for years,

The thing needs pulling down,

You’ll get the place for a song, of course,

But there’s better in the town.’

 

I went and I picked the key up and

I stood out on the grass,

And stared on up at the window that

Was crazed, with broken glass,

The house was dark as a midden, all

Was shrouded in a gloom,

I felt my way up the passageway

And ventured in that room.

 

She sat quite still with her back to me

And stared out as before,

The window, it was crazed and cracked

And that was the most she saw,

I walked up slowly behind her, though

I didn’t know what to say,

She looked as if she’d been porcelain,

But now she was only clay.

 

I had the glazier fix the pane

And I locked that room up tight,

I wouldn’t let anyone go in there,

It didn’t seem to be right.

I put on a Captain’s hat, and stand

Between the house and the sea,

And swear that I see a gentle smile,

But now, she’s looking at me!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

I feel like I have been living my life, staring from the ledge of my soul, waiting for that some return of someone so deeply loved. To be haunted in the present by a love of the past, to be haunted for 30 years! I know well this feeling. Yes! I know it well.

It seems a tragedy to love someone so deep. Greater still is the tragedy that so few love this way.

[Avinash]

The sight of you finally brought smile on her face and you were the captain she has been waiting for. Many stories which we come across and many characters we distantly admire but it takes courage to be part of the story. Thanks for inviting to this unusual tale of love and longing.

[TL Boehm]

When we are storm weary and bereft, worn to the marrow by the wait. Forgotten...There is such a sadness - yet here is this twist. An eloquent story my friend.

[Erana]

Wow, such a beautiful story told in a classic way
Thank you for sharing
~E

[R Smith]

that's a lovely tale David, funny I know but it makes me think of Madame Butterfly waiting for her Captain to return form America, I guess that's my fantasy though, thanks for sharing this beautiful story of love.

[Marie]

Sounds as though you captured Penelope...

Though Ulysses did finally return to her...

[MomzillaNC]

Again, this has such a sense of being of the time, 1853, that I have to ask… is it about someone who really lived at that time? As always, you're lines are enchanting.