| |
| DARK, dark lay the drifters, against the red west, | |
| As they shot their long meshes of steel overside; | |
| And the oily green waters were rocking to rest | |
| When Kilmeny went out, at the turn of the tide. | |
| And nobody knew where that lassie would roam, | 5 |
| For the magic that called her was tapping unseen. | |
| It was well nigh a week ere Kilmeny came home, | |
| And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. | |
| |
| She’d a gun at her bow that was Newcastle’s best, | |
| And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde, | 10 |
| And a secret her skipper had never confessed, | |
| Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride; | |
| And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome, | |
| The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin. | |
| O, it may have been mermaids that lured her from home, | 15 |
| But nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. | |
| |
| It was dark when Kilmeny came home from her quest, | |
| With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died; | |
| But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast; | |
| And “Well done, Kilmeny!” the admiral cried. | 20 |
| Now at sixty-four fathom a conger may come, | |
| And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine; | |
| But late in the evening Kilmeny came home, | |
| And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. | |
| |
| There’s a wandering shadow that stares at the foam, | 25 |
| Though they sing all the night to old England, their queen, | |
| Late, late in the evening Kilmeny came home, | |
| And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been. | |
| |
