WITH THE SUBMARINES

ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the
blind snakes creep;
Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot
through the deep;
And, lurking where low headlands shield from
cruising scout and spy,
We bide the signal through the gloom that bids
us slay or die.

All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard
the strait sea lanes--
Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the
desperate aeroplanes--
And still as death and swift as fate, above the
darkling coasts,
The spying Wireless sows the night with troops
of stealthy ghosts,

While hushed through all her huddled streets the
tide-walled city waits
The drumming thunders that announce brute
battle at her gates.

Southward a hundred windy leagues, through
storms that blind and bar,
Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our cap-
tains seek the war;