Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NIGHT ON THE CONVOY, ALEXANDRIA - MARSEILLES, by SIEGFRIED SASSOON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck Last Line: We are going home ... Victims ... Three thousand souls. Subject(s): Homecoming; Navy - Great Britain; World War I; English Navy; First World War | ||||||||
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...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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