Lost Billingsgate

From Billingsgate the beacons’s flash No longer stabs the quivering dark, But fang like breakers foam and gnash Above its sand bars ribbed and stark. Where whispering grasses used to grow And nesting terns their shelter made, Now snarls the rasping undertow And breezes mutter - half afraid! For it has gone like Lyonnesse Of Arthur’s reign - enchanted realm Of dreamy eyed forgetfulness That saw the ocean overwhelm Her shores, till e’en the towers were drowned Where Merlin spun his evil spells, And fishers startle - when the sound Wells upward as from sunken bells! Yes, Billingsgate is lost to view Beneath the all engulfing sea, The lonely Isle the Pilgrims knew - But still it lives in memory. And sometimes in the dead of night We hear the shoal bemoan its fate Clothed in a shroud of breakers white - The ghost of vanished Billingsgate!