(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

 

While the far farewell music thins and fails,

And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine

All smalling slowly to the gray sea-line—

And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,

Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,

Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men

To seeming words that ask and ask again:

“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs and Gaels

Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,

That are as puppets in a playing hand? —

When shall the saner softer polities

Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land

And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand

Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

—Thomas Hardy