Submarines Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

'H.M. Submarine –– is now much overdue, and must be considered lost.'

'I take off my 'at to them blokes in the submarines,' said Murphy,
'It ain't no picnic for none of us fellers at sea;
What with mines and bombs, there's always something to worry you,
But I reckon theirs is the toughest traverse of the whole lot,' said he.

'If you're sunk, well, you've got a chance of your life maybe,
You've got the sea round you and the sky overhead,
And if you've got to go I'd as soon that way as any other -
But if they die, they die in the dark,' he said.

'Down there in the dark, and nobody seein' them,
Nobody ever to know how the end come,
How or when, or slow or sudden, or anything at all about it,
Only that the days go by, an' they don't come 'ome . . .'