Page:Destroyers and Other Verses.djvu/15



On this primeval strip of western land,

With purple bays and tongues of shining sand,

Time, like and echoing tide,

Moves drowsily in idle ebb and flow;

The sunshine slumbers in the tangled grass

And homely folk with simple greeting pass,

As to their worship or their work they go.

Man, earth, and sea

Seem linked in elemental harmony,

And my insurgent sorrow finds release

In dreams of peace.

But silent, grey,

Out of the curtained haze,

Across the bay

Two fierce destroyers glide with bows a-foam

And predatory gaze,

Like cormorants that seek a submerged prey.

An angel of destruction guards the door

And keeps the peace of our ancestral home;

Freedom to dream, to work, and to adore,

These vagrant days, nights of untroubled breath,

Are bought with death.