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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DESTROYERS, by HENRY HEAD
First Line: On this primeval strip of western land
Last Line: Are bought with death.
Subject(s): Ships & Shipping; World War I; First World War
First Line: On this primeval strip of western land
Last Line: Are bought with death.
Subject(s): Ships & Shipping; World War I; First World War
ON this primeval strip of western land,
With purple bays and tongues of shining sand,
Time, like an 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, gray,
Out of the curtained haze,
Across the bay
Two fierce destroyers glide with bows afoam
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.
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