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