Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OUTWARD BOUND, by NOWELL OXLAND First Line: There's a waterfall I'm leaving Last Line: We shall go not forth again. Alternate Author Name(s): Oxland, Noel Subject(s): Sailing & Sailors; World War I; First World War | ||||||||
THERE'S a waterfall I'm leaving Running down the rocks in foam, There's a pool for which I'm grieving Near the water-ouzel's home, And it's there that I'd be lying With the heather close at hand And the curlews faintly crying 'Mid the wastes of Cumberland. While the midnight watch is winging Thoughts of other days arise, I can hear the river singing Like the saints in Paradise; I can see the water winking Like the merry eyes of Pan, And the slow half-pounder sinking By the bridge's granite span. Ah! to win them back and clamber Braced anew with winds I love, From the river's stainless amber To the morning mist above, See through cloud-rifts rent asunder, Like a painted scroll unfurled, Ridge and hollow rolling under To the fringes of the world. Now the weary guard are sleeping, Now the great propellers churn, Now the harbour lights are creeping Into emptiness astern, While the sentry wakes and watches Plunging triangles of light Where the water leaps and catches At our escort in the night. Great their happiness who seeing Still with unbenighted eyes Kin of theirs who gave them being, Sun and earth that made them wise, Die and feel their embers quicken Year by year in summer time, When the cotton grasses thicken On the hills they used to climb. Shall we also be as they be, Mingled with our mother clay, Or return no more, it may be? Who has knowledge, who shall say? Yet we hope that from the bosom Of our shaggy father Pan, When the earth breaks into blossom Richer from the dust of man, Though the high gods smite and slay us, Though we come not whence we go, As the host of Menelaus Came there many years ago; Yet the selfsame wind shall bear us From the same departing place Out across the Gulf of Saros And the peaks of Samothrace: We shall pass in summer weather, We shall come at eventide, Where the fells stand up together And all quiet things abide; Mixed with cloud and wind and river, Sun-distilled in dew and rain, One with Cumberland for ever We shall go not forth again. | 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 IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |
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