Sunday War Poets...

Sir Henry Newbolt

(1862-1924)

FAREWELL 

Mother, with unbowed head

 Hear thou across the sea

The farewell of the dead,

 The dead who died for thee.

Greet them again with tender words and grave,

For, saving thee, themselves they could not save.

~

To keep the house unharmed

Their fathers built so fair,

Deeming endurance armed

Better than brute despair,

They found the secret of the word that saith,

"Service is sweet, for all true life is death."

~

So greet thou well thy dead

Across the homeless sea,

And be thou comforted

Because they died for thee.

Far off they served, but now their deed is done

For evermore their life and thine are one.

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Sir Henry Newbolt was born in Bilston,Staffordshire. On leaving Christi College, Oxford, he became a barrister but is better known for his poetry and for his literary works on naval history. At the start of the First World War, Newbolt - along with over 20 other leading British writers - was brought into the War Propaganda Bureau which had been formed to promote Britain's interests during the war and maintain public opinion in favour of the war.

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FAREWELL was originally composed in 1910 but was reprinted in The Times on the 

23rd September 1914

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