I dreamed a dream in sailor town, a foolish dream and vain,
Of ships and men departed, of old days come again —
And an old song in sailor town, an old song to sing
When shipmate meets with shipmate in the evening.

English poet Cicely Fox Smith was born February 1st, 1882, 125 years ago, into a middle class family in Lymm, near Warrington, England during the latter half of the reign of Queen Victoria. She was a prolific poet, publishing well over 550 poems in her lifetime. In fact by her early 20's she had published four books of poetry and received encouraging reviews. After Ms. Smith returned to England from a 9-year working residency in Victoria, British Columbia, just prior to World War 1, she produced what can only be described as a flood of poems, many with a nautical theme. Her work was favorably compared to that of Kipling and Masefield at the time. She had learned to speak with the sailor's voice, and the yarns she had heard on the Victoria waterfront became the experience she would draw upon for years.

As the poet acknowledged years later in her travel book ALL THE WAY ROUND: The Seaways of Africa, British Columbia was hardly her first choice for international adventure:

"Some day, I told myself, I would go (to Africa)! ... I went to Canada instead. I didn't want to in the least. I hated the idea. Its names had no romance or mystery in them. Who wants to go somewhere called, of all names under heaven, Alberta? Alberta besides, the cowboys had vanished, and most of the Indians were good Indians, which is to say dead Indians. As it turned out I wasn't sorry. Canada gave me many things. Much sorrow. Much joy, memories of ships and sailors and magic Pacific coast sunsets. But it wasn't Africa!"

Here is her description of encountering an interesting character on the Victoria waterfront, an encounter which became the inspiration for her poem "Traveller":

"The Pacific coast is a great place for rolling stones of every sort and description. I remember meeting what I should say was the very perfection of the type. He was sitting on the edge of the Outer Wharf – it was in Victoria – on a sort of coaming that runs along the edge, very comfortable to sit on, though given to exuding tar in very hot weather. His coat – I don't think there was a shirt underneath – was fastened together with string, being innocent of buttons. His knee showed through his trousers. His boots were ruins. But he spoke with the unmistakable accents of cultivation.

I don't think he was a drunkard; he had none of the squalid signs of it. He may have been a gambler, but I doubt that either. I should rather take him for one of those born tramps, who have some strain of gipsy blood that keeps them constantly on the move, who abhors the clothes, the conventions, the cribbed and cabined life of cities, and choose for their comrades the sailor, the cowboy, the gaucho, for their habitation the tent, the herdsman's hut, the camp-fire, the foc's'les of ships. His eyes were clear and his skin tanned; he had none of that look of the déclassé for all his rags and tatters. I talked to him quite a long time about ships, of which he seemed to know a great deal. I only saw him once. He was the sort you only see once. But I have often wondered what his history was."

Her experience in Victoria may also have included a romantic relationship with a sailor who is described as "Dan" in numerous poems she composed. Dan is introduced as a shantymen, a worksong leader aboard the sailing ship that delivered the poet to Victoria. Her poem "Shipmates" captures that young love, and the hard choice that those who follow the sea have to make in leaving those they love behind. We never learn for sure what happened to Dan, even though she describes his "deaths" in several different poems; I find "The Lee Fore Brace" the most haunting description. At the very least Dan was someone who made a deep impression on her and her poetry. The poet never married in later life and there is no hint of another romantic relationship. Her resolve to live single may be summarized in her poem "Morgan Le Fay" (1914):

"I will put by my violent days, and the ill deeds that I have wrought,
All wayward sins of a wild heart, all empty joys I sought,
I will forswear the fruitless year and the deedless day,
And the long gold tresses and false caresses of Morgan le Fay."

However, the poet always expressed a wish to revisit to Victoria, although she knew that many of the things she loved about it would have changed:

"I think I will go again, one of these days, and see … It may be I shall still find ships at the lumber mill, though not the ships I knew. It may be that still, at high noon in some street of China-town, when the shadow lies on the white-hot pavement in dark pools, in some dusk room with a dwarf tree in a blue-and-white pot in the window they still play the same little tune on a two-stringed fiddle of China: a little tune of a few notes that seems to have neither end nor beginning – dropping like a thin thread of silver into the hot gold of the afternoon…"

She also expressed this wish to return in her poem "Pacific Coast."

Her literary outpourings were such as to persuade the Government to award her, at the age of 67, a modest pension for "her services to literature." Ms. Smith continued to compose poetry throughout her life, eventually producing 15 major books of poetry, novels, short stories, and other books focused on her beloved "sailortown." She even penned her own gravestone epitaph:

But from this earth
This grave
This dust
My lord shall raise me up
I trust

She died on April 8th, 1954, in the town of Bow where she'd been living with her sister.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble