Their silver scalpels probe the wound of night
seeking our doom, a death to death.
And now no highflung phrase, no braggart gesture of
the hand or jaw can still the double fear.
Who fly ten thousand feet above in the shrill dark
are linked with those who cower under the earth to
hear, vague as sea upon an island wind, the murmur
which is, for some eternity, for some an ending.
And he is rising mad who searches here for meaning.

By Pilot Officer T. R. Hodgson,
killed in action in 1940