Homeward Bound

After long labouring in the windy ways,
    On smooth and shining tides
    Swiftly the great ship glides,
        Her storms forgot, her weary watches past;
Northward she glides, and through the enchanted haze
        Faint on the verge her far hope dawns at last.

The phantom sky-line of a shadowy down,
    Whose pale white cliffs below
    Through sunny mist aglow,
        Like noon-day ghosts of summer moonshine gleam---
Soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown,
        There lies the home, of all our mortal dream.

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Henry John Newbolt was an English poet and author, famous for his ballads such as 'Vitaï Lampada'. He graduated from Oxford and was called to the bar, but he is better remembered for his literary contributions than his legal career. Newbolt served as a government advisor on military and naval literature during World War I. He was knighted in 1915 for his services to literature. Newbolt's work often reflected themes of patriotism and duty.

Henry John Newbolt

The King Of England

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Quarter-Gunner's Yarn

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

Love and Grief.

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Hundredth Year

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Outward Bound

Dear Earth, near Earth, the clay that made us men,
    The land we sowed,
    The hearth that glowed---
    O Mother, must we bid farewell to thee?
Fast dawns the last dawn, and what shall comfort then
    The lonely hearts that roam the outer sea?

Gray wakes the daybreak, the shivering sails are set,
    To misty deeps
    The channel sweeps---
    O Mother, think on us who think on thee!
Earth-home, birth-home, with love remember yet
    The sons in exile on the eternal sea.

Henry John Newbolt

Messmates

He gave us all a good-bye cheerily
    At the first dawn of day;
We dropped him down the side full drearily
    When the light died away.
It's a dead dark watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there,
Where the Trades and the tides roll over him
    And the great ships go by.

He's there alone with green seas rocking him
    For a thousand miles round;
He's there alone with dumb things mocking him,
    And we're homeward bound.
It's a long, lone watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there,
While the months and the years roll over him
    And the great ships go by.

I wonder if the tramps come near enough
    As they thrash to and fro,
And the battle-ships' bells rin...

Henry John Newbolt

Homecoming

When I came home from wanderings
In a tall chattering ship,
I thought a hundred happy things,
Of people, places, and such things
As I came sailing home.

The tall ship moved how slowly on
With me and hundreds more,
That thought not then of wanderings,
But of unwhispered, longed-for things,
Familiar things of home.

For not in miles seemed other lands
Far off, but in long years
As we came near to England then;
Even the tall ship heard secret things
As she moved trembling home.

It was at dawn. The chattering ship
Was strangely hushed; faint mist
Crept everywhere, and we crept on,
And every eye was creeping on
The mist, as we moved home....

Until we saw, far, very far,
Or dreamed we saw, her cliffs,
And thought ...

John Frederick Freeman

Homeward We Turn. Isle Of Columba's Cell

Homeward we turn. Isle of Columba's Cell,
Where Christian piety's soul-cheering spark
(Kindled from Heaven between the light and dark
Of time) shone like the morning-star, farewell!
And fare thee well, to Fancy visible,
Remote St. Kilda, lone and loved sea-mark
For many a voyage made in her swift bark,
When with more hues than in the rainbow dwell
Thou a mysterious intercourse dost hold,
Extracting from clear skies and air serene,
And out of sun-bright waves, a lucid veil,
That thickens, spreads, and, mingling fold with fold,
Makes known, when thou no longer canst be seen,
Thy whereabout, to warn the approaching sail.

William Wordsworth

Elegiac

Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
    Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
    Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
    With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
    Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
    Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead,
    Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsa...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An Exiles Farewell

The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.
The broad Atlantics bed of foam
Still breaks against our prow;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!

Against the bulwarks on the poop
I lean, and watch the sun
Behind the red horizon stoop,
His race is nearly run.
Those waves will never quench his light,
Oer which they seem to close,
To-morrow he will rise as bright
As he this morning rose.

How brightly gleams the orb of day
Across the trackless sea!
How lightly dance the waves that play
Like dolphins in our lee!
The restless waters seem to say,
In smothered tones to me,
How many thousand miles away
My native land...

Adam Lindsay Gordon