So, age to age shall tell how they sailed through the darkness,
Where, under those high, austere, implacable stars,
Not one in ten
Might look for a dawn again.
They saw the ferryboats, Iris and Daffodil, creeping
Darkly as clouds to the shimmering mine-strewn bars,
Flash into light!
Then thunder reddened the night.
The wild white swords of the searchlights blinded and stabbed them.
The sharp black shadows fought in fantastic wars.
Black waves leapt whitening,
Red decks were washed with lightning.
But, under the twelve-inch guns of the black land-batteries,
The hacked bright hulk, in a glory of crackling spars,
Moved to her goal
Like an immortal soul,
That, while its raw rent flesh in a furnace is tortured,
Reigns by a law no agony ever can shake,
And shines in power
Above all shocks of the hour.
Oh, there, while the decks ran blood and the star-shells lightened,
The shattering ship that the enemy never could break
Swept through the fire
And grappled her heart's desire.
There, on a wreck that blazed with the soul of England,
The lads that died in the dark for England's sake
Knew, as they died,
Nelson was at their side;
Nelson, and all the ghostly fleets of his island,
Fighting beside them there, and the soul of Drake!—
Dreams, as we knew,
Till these lads made them true.
