The Send-Off

Wilfred Owen

1893 to 1918

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Track 1

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Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Winked to the guard.
In wild trainloads?
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
They were not ours:
Stood staring hard,
To the siding-shed,
Up half-known roads.