William Cox Bennett

Come Home, My Sailor

Summary


"Come Home, My Sailor" is a short poem in which a speaker implores the winter wind to carry a message across the seas to a beloved sailor. Through howling gusts, hail, sleet, and snow, the speaker urges the wind to sing urgently in the sailor's ear, drawing him home before Christmas arrives. The poem captures the ache of waiting and the fragile hope that even a winter storm might become a messenger of love and reunion.

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Blow, wind, blow;
  Sing through yard and shroud;
Pipe it shrilly and loud,
  Aloft as well as below;
Sing in my sailor’s ear
  The song I sing to you,
“Come home, my sailor true,
For Christmas that comes so near.”

A woman on a stormy clifftop gazes toward a distant ship at sea, in Come Home, My Sailor by William Cox Bennett.

Go, wind, go;
  Hurry his home-bound sail,
Through gusts that are edged with hail,
  Through winter, and sleet, and snow;
Song, in my sailor’s ear,
  Your shrilling and moan shall be,
  For he knows they sing him to me
And Christmas that comes so near.

Credits

William Cox Bennett was a 19th-century English poet known for his lyrical verse and songs celebrating everyday emotion and working-class sentiment. "Come Home, My Sailor" reflects his characteristic warmth, weaving a domestic longing for reunion into the raw imagery of a winter storm at sea.
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