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