{
 "id": "mary-weston-fordham/shipwreck",
 "title": "Shipwreck",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Mary Weston Fordham",
 "poet_slug": "mary-weston-fordham",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Magnolia Leaves",
 "book_slug": "magnolia-leaves",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 2,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1897,
  "venue": "Magnolia Leaves (1897)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/magnolialeavespo00ford"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/mary-weston-fordham_magnolia-leaves",
  "file": "magnolia-leaves.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/mary-weston-fordham-magnolia-leaves-full-text-1897-preface-by-booker-t-washington",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006775637"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 21,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Night and a starless sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ship on wild billows tost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With tattered sails and opening seams.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And deck bestrewn with falling beams.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swift plunging to her doom.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Red lightnings round her flash,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Loud thunders crash and roar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the noble vessel mounts the crest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the reeking waves, then sinks to rest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mid carnival of woe.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The Petrel soars aloft,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wailing her hymn of death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the dirgelike sounds pierce the blackened sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While the crew send forth one anguished cry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sinking to lowest depth.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some ships go out to sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That never more return,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Souls that from heaven in infancy come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Tarnished and ruined by sin may become,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like the Dove to the Ark they never return,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But sink as ship to doom.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}