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

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

336
KEEPING THE SEAS

WATCHMEN OF THE NIGHT

LORDS 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.