Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps
To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

These lines juxtapose parental tenderness with the brutalizing effects of war. “Meek-eyed parents” suggests ordinary, unheroic civilians—humble, anxious, and loving—moving quickly (“hasten”) to welcome children returning from military service. The shock arrives in the final phrase: the offspring are “terrible from camps,” implying that training camps and/or wartime encampments have altered them—hardened, traumatized, or made capable of violence. The couplet’s rhyme and measured cadence heighten the irony: a familiar homecoming scene is undercut by the recognition that war does not simply end when soldiers return; it follows them into family life, changing how they are seen and how they can be received.