Its whiteness for a moment with the cloud,
And finally, with nose a little bowed,
Off towards the distant sea its course it bends.
The watching boy beheld no other change
In all the placid, comfortable scene,
And yet he deeply realized what mean
The airships and the other things that are strange,
But form a living part of England now;
And when he left the place where he had been,
He seemed to have become a man somehow.