They called us up from England at the breaking of the day,
And the wireless whisper caught us from a hundred leagues away —
“Sentries at the Outer Line,
All that hold the countersign,
Listen in the North Sea — news for you to-day.”
All across the waters, at the paling of the morn,
The wireless whispered softly ere the summer day was born —
“Be you near or ranging far,
By the Varne or Weser bar,
The Fleet is out and steaming to the Eastward and the dawn.”
Far and away to the North and West, in the dancing glare of the sunlit ocean,
Just a haze, a shimmer of smoke-cloud, grew and broadened many a mile;
Low and long and faint and spreading, banner and van of a world in motion,
Creeping out to the North and West, it hung in the skies alone awhile.
Then from over the brooding haze the roar of murmuring engines swelled,
And the men of the air looked down to us, a mile below their feet;
Down the wind they passed above, their course to the silver sun-track held,
And we looked back to the West again, and saw the English Fleet.
Over the curve of the rounded sea, in ordered lines as the ranks of Rome,
Over the far horizon steamed a power that held us dumb,—
Miles of racing lines of steel that flattened the sea to a field of foam,
Rolling deep to the wash they made,
We saw, to the threat of a German blade,
The Shield of England come.