KITCHENER

There is wild water from the north; The headlands darken in their foam As with a threat of challenge stubborn earth Booms at that far wild sea-line charging home.

The night shall stand upon the shifting sea As yesternight stood there, And hear the cry of waters through the air, The iron voice of headlands start and rise— The noise of winds for mastery That screams to hear the thunder in those cries. But now henceforth there shall be heard From Brough of Bursay, Marwick Head, And shadows of the distant coast, Another voice bestirred— Telling of something greatly lost Somewhere below the tidal glooms, and dead. Beyond the uttermost Of aught the night may hear on any seas From tempest-known wild water's cry, and roar Of iron shadows looming from the shore, It shall be heard—and when the Orcades Sleep in a hushed Atlantic's starry folds As smoothly as, far down below the tides, Sleep on the windless broad sea-wolds Where this night's shipwreck hides.

By many a sea-holm where the shock Of ocean's battle falls, and into spray Gives up its ghosts of strife; by reef and rock Ravaged by their eternal brute affray With monstrous frenzies of their shore's green foe; Where overstream and overfall and undertow Strive, snatch away; A wistful voice, without a sound, Shall dwell beside Pomona, on the sea, And speak the homeward- and the outward-bound, And touch the helm of passing minds And bid them steer as wistfully— Saying: "He did great work, until the winds And waters hereabout that night betrayed Him to the drifting death! His work went on— He would not be gainsaid…. Though where his bones are, no man knows, not one!"

John Helston