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(_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)
WHILE the far farewell music thins and fails, / And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine- / All smalling slowly to the gray sea line- / And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails, / Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men / To seeming words that ask and ask again: / "How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels / Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these, / That are as puppets in a playing hand? - / When shall the saner softer polities / Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, / And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand / Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas? "