Poems: New and Old (Newbolt)/The Middle Watch

by Henry Newbolt

III

The Middle Watch

 

In a blue dusk the ship asternUplifts her slender spars,With golden lights that seem to burnAmong the silver stars.Like fleets along a cloudy shoreThe constellations creep,Like planets on the ocean floorOur silent course we keep.

And over the endless plain,Out of the night forlornRises a faint refrain,A song of the day to be born—Watch, oh watch till ye find againLife and the land of morn.

From a dim West to a dark EastOur lines unwavering head,As if their motion long had ceasedAnd Time itself were dead. Vainly we watch the deep below,Vainly the void above,They died a thousand years ago—Life and the land we love.

But over the endless plain,Out of the night forlornRises a faint refrain,A song of the day to be born—Watch, oh watch till ye find againLife and the land of morn.