Dover 1937

Steep roads, a tunnel through the downs are the approaches; 
A ruined pharos overlooks a constructed bay; 
The sea-front is almost elegant; all this show 
Has, somewhere inland, a vague and dirty root: 
                            Nothing is made in this town.

But the dominant Norman castle floodlit at night 
And the trains that fume in the station built on the sea 
Testify to the interests of its regular life: 
Here live the experts on what the soldiers want 
                            And who the travellers are,

Whom the ships carry in and out between the lighthouses 
That guard for ever the made privacy of this bay 
Like twin stone dogs opposed on a gentleman's gate: 
Within these breakwaters English is spoken; without 
                            Is the immense improbable atlas.

The eyes of the departing migrants are fixed on the sea, 
To conjure their special fates from the impersonal water: 
"I see an important decision made on a lake,
An illness, a beard, Arabia found in a bed,
                            Nanny defeated, Money."

And filled with the tears of the beaten or calm with fame, 
The eyes of the returning thank the historical cliffs:
"The heart has at last ceased to lie, and the clock to accuse; 
In the shadow under the yew, at the children's party 
                            Everything will be explained."

And the old town with its keep and its Georgian houses 
Has built its routine upon these unusual moments; 
The vows, the tears, the slight emotional signals 
Are here eternal and unremarkable gestures
                            Like ploughing or soldiers' songs:

Soldiers who swarm in the pubs in their pretty clothes, 
As fresh and silly as girls from a high-class academy: 
The Lion, the Rose or the Crown will not ask them to die, 
Not here, not now. All they are killing is time,
                            Their pauper civilian future.

Above them, expensive and lovely as a rich child's toy, 
The aeroplanes fly in the new European air,
On the edge of that air that makes England of minor importance;
And the tides warn bronzing bathers of a cooling star, 
                            With half its history done.

High over France the full moon, cold and exciting 
Like one of those dangerous flatterers one meets and loves 
When one is very unhappy, returns the human stare: 
The night has many recruits; for thousands of pilgrims 
                            The Mecca is coldness of heart.

And the cry of the gulls at dawn is sad like work: 
The soldier guards the traveller who pays for the soldier; 
Each one prays in the dusk for himself and neither 
Controls the years. Some are temporary heroes:
                            Some of these people are happy.