At sunset, the speaker watches a ghostly Cornishman run back to his home shore, laughing as he escapes the weariness of war. The cliffs and green sea receive him kindly, washing away his terrible past. The mood is tender and elegiac, not frightening: this ghost is an honoured guest rather than a haunting.
Then the speaker widens the vision, calling to “million ghosts” of the war dead to come home. Some will return to mothers, lovers, towns, or forests; nature itself will make amends. The final lines voice a wish to travel through space and heaven just to witness all those ghosts returning. The poem mixes grief with longing and a consoling hope that the dead might find rest in the places they loved.