To H.M.C

A silence falls on us to-day,

Our lips are closed, we do not speak,

But, in each other’s eyes we seek

And find the thing that each would say.

So deep it lies, a rock set fast,

Washed hard by life, by love, by tears,

Beneath the floods of time and years

Built up and rooted in the past.

And sometimes, when the tide is low,

A voice comes up the Northern sea;

Across the sands to you and me

It calls from lands left long ago.

By marshes lying dim and wide,

Through wet, grey sea-fogs, creeping on,

Back from that youth for ever gone

It comes to us across the tide.

How shall we speak? What words can say

The thing for which no words are known,

That calls to us from places lone

Through past, through present, through to-day?