Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/336

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ORDS of the seas' great wilderness

The light-grey warships cut the wind;

The headland dwindles less and less;

The great waves, breaking, drench and blind

The stern-faced watcher on the deck,

While England fades into a speck.

Afar on that horizon grey

The sleepy homesteads one by one

Shine with their cheerful lights as day

Dies in the valley and is gone,

While the new moon comes o'er the hill

And floods the landscape, white and still.

But outward 'mid the homeless waste

The battle-fleet held on its way;

On either side the torn seas raced,

Over the bridge blew up the spray;

The quartermaster at the wheel

Steered through the night his ship of steel.

Once, from a masthead, blinked a light—

The Admiral spoke unto the Fleet;

Swift answers flashed along the night,

The charthouse glimmered through the sleet;

A bell rang from the engine-room,

And, ere it ceased—the great guns' boom!

Then thunder through the silence broke

And rolled along the sullen deep;

A hundred guns flashed fire and spoke,

Which England heard not in her sleep

Nor dreamed of, while her fighting sons

Fed and fired the blazing guns.