OUT in the blustering darkness, on the deck A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black, The lean Destroyers, level with our track, Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray. One sentry by the davits, in the gloom Stands mute: the boat heaves onward through the night. Shrouded is every chink of cabined light: And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom. Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh; And slowly growing used to groping dark, I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length, Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength -- Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark Danger of life at war, they lie so still, All prostrate and defenceless, head by head... And I remember Arras, and that hill Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead. We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill Of fiery-chamber'd anguish, throbs and rolls. We are going home ... victims ... three thousand souls. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE TWO MYSTERIES by MARY ELIZABETH MAPES DODGE PARADISE by FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER PASSING BY by THOMAS FORD (1580-1648) TO HAFIZ by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 87. AL-GHANI by EDWIN ARNOLD HOPE DEFERRED by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON |