What did the ships return happily or unhappily ?
Answers
This line is a part of "The North Ship" written by the poet named Philip Larkin. This comes under the syllabus of class 9 for Madhyamik.
Here an overall description of action of winds and turbulence has been explained for the ships.
Among the first two ships, the northbound ship was stern to be moving towards a long journey and reach its destination. So this ship did not return back.
However the other ships approached towards their destination, it was not clear whether they were successful or not as they got lost after a certain period of time.
This is what the poet means as "happy" or "unhappy". So each ship awaited a different fate. So it is not easy to understand whether the ships returned happily or unhappily as they reached to certain distant seas.