The Home-Coming - by
When this blast is over-blown,
And the beacon fires shall burn
And in the street
Is the sound of feet –
They also shall return.
When this blast is over-blown,
And the beacon fires shall burn
And in the street
Is the sound of feet –
They also shall return.
Will you forget?
/ When all the fight is done,
/ And victory is…
Out of the mist of yearnings, prides, and shames
We raise our cairn of glorious regret,
And with God’s honour now unite the names
Men signed in bloody sweat.
A haze of dust floats up from marching feet
/ Along our homely roads;
/ Great waggons clatter down the…
We were eating chip potatoes underneath the April stars
/ That glittered coldly and aloof from earth and earthly wars;
/ We were three…
Captain ! There is no harbour that is sure
/ Save Thy sure harbour. Over minèd seas
/ Gathers the dreadful dawn that…
Oh early grey of morning-time!
/ Oh Pentland Hills!
/ The bracken white with frosty rime,
/ The…
Over the wheatfields the sky was shot with light
/ And there was one large star.
/ The Pentland Hills were full of purple…
There was no sound at all, no crying in the village,
/ Nothing you would count as sound, that is, after the…
Daytime an’ nicht,
Sun, wind an’ rain;
The lang, cauld licht
O’ the spring months again.
Who are we remembering? / Millennia of the distant, recent dead, / all men, women, children lost to / wars…
Sassoon, the elder, Sunday golfer; / Owen, bookish, gangly, pale – mingling / with the queue for the refectory.