The Tunnel

This is where the water hurries under the archway,
This is where we enter the long tunnel,
And the sunlight is cut by the blade of dark.

So long to have lived in the calculable daylight,
So long to have hoped we might not meet the darkness,
And now it has come. Our eyes must alter focus.

Time was, we saw the country spread before us,
Spread behind, around; charting current-speed, landmarks,
Plotted our course aright. That time is ended.

Now night wins. Strain ahead, discover nothing;
Round, above – nothing but the dank and hollow darkness;
Look back, the arch we entered, and the circle dwindling.

Is there an outlet, and into what country?
We feel the pace; spray mounts; what means that muffled roaring?
But the end of this tunnel no man knows.

(November 1939)

Poems of War

  • Alone

    Alone to walk the dripping woods of spring
       While daisies spy you?

  • Epitaph on a New Army

    No drums they wished, whose thoughts were tied
    To girls and jobs and mother,

  • The Tunnel

    This is where the water hurries under the archway,
    This is where we enter the long tunnel,

  • Come Death Suddenly

    Come death suddenly from the sea or cloud,
    With the blast of thunder and the blinding shroud,

  • If I should die

    If I should die, grieve not for youth
    Blighted, and towers of hope that fell

  • The Prophetic Hour

    In this dread hour for thee and all mankind
    Britain, be Freedom’s fortress or her grave.

  • The Jervis Bay

    ..The fifth day of November, Fifty North and Forty West,
    Was edging to its departure, like an undecided guest,

  • Stella Polaris: Homebound

    Above the great ship’s lifting bow
    I watch the Pole Star nightly stand,

  • Thermopylae

    The story, as now we see, was over-written
    By Herodotus, bless his warm Hellenic heart!

  • The Anzac Graves on Gallipoli

    You may not pass this place. Here you must stop,
    Though all the world’s great tides run heedless by