OUTWARD BOUND
by Lt. Noel Oxland 6th Battalion, written on the Transport taking the Battalion to the Mediterranean and published in The Times on 27 August 1915; Lt. Oxland was killed in action on 9th August at Suvla.
There’s a waterfall I’m leaving
Running down the rocks in foam,
There’s a pool for which I’m grieving
Near the water-ouzel’s home,
And its there that I’d be lying
With the heather close at hand,
And the curlews faintly crying
Mid the wastes of Cumberland.
While the midnight watch is winging,
Thoughts of other days arise,
I can hear the river singing
Like the Saints in Paradise;
I can see the water winking
Like the merry eyes of Pan,
And the slow half pounder sinking
By the bridge’s granite span.
Ah to win them back and clamber
Braced anew with winds I love,
From the river’s stainless amber
To the morning mists above,
See through cloud rifts rent asunder
Like a painted scroll unfurled
Ridge and hollow rolling under
To the fringes of the world.
Now the weary guard are sleeping
Now the great propellers churn,
Now the harbour lights are creeping
Into emptiness astern,
While the sentry wakes and watches
Plunging triangles of light
Where the water leaps and catches
At our escort in the night.
Great their happiness who seeing
Still with unbenighted eyes,
Kin of theirs who gave them being
Sun and earth that made them wise,
Die and feel their embers quicken
Year by year in summer time,
When the cotton grasses thicken
On the hills they used to climb.
Shall we also be as they be,
Mingled with our mother clay,
Or return no more it may be?
Who knowledge, who shall say?
Yet we hope that from the bosom
Of our shaggy father Pan,
When the earth breaks into blossom
Richer from the dust of man.
Though the high Gods smite and slay us,
Though we come not whence we go,
As the host of Menelaus
Came there many years ago;
Yet the self same wind shall bear us
From the same departing place
Out across the Gulf of Saros
And the peaks of Samothrace.
We shall pass in summer weather,
We shall come at eventide,
When the fells stand up together
And all quiet things abide;
Mixed with cloud and wind and river,
Sun-distilled in dew and rain,
One with Cumberland for ever
We shall not go forth again.
