Poetry Archives

(For Alden March)


With drooping sail and pennant
 That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
 Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
 Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
 Their ghostly bulwarks glow.

Here is a Spanish galleon
 That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
 Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
 And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
 Death’s livid, dreadful white.

White as the ice that clove her
 That unforgotten day,
Among her pallid sisters
 The grim Titanic lay.
And through the leagues above her
 She looked aghast, and said:
“What is this living ship that comes
 Where every ship is dead?”

The ghostly vessels trembled
 From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
 That broke their vigil now?
Down through the startled ocean
 A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
 But red, like living flame!

The pale green waves about her
 Were swiftly, strangely dyed,
By the great scarlet stream that flowed
 From out her wounded side.
And all her decks were scarlet
 And all her shattered crew.
She sank among the white ghost ships
 And stained them through and through.

The grim Titanic greeted her
 “And who art thou?” she said;
“Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet
 Arrayed in living red?
We are the ships of sorrow
 Who spend the weary night,
Until the dawn of Judgment Day,
 Obscure and still and white.”

“Nay,” said the scarlet visitor,
 “Though I sink through the sea,
A ruined thing that was a ship,
 I sink not as did ye.
For ye met with your destiny
 By storm or rock or fight,
So through the lagging centuries
 Ye wear your robes of white.

“But never crashing iceberg
 Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
 The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters,
 My blood that is like flame,
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
 A deed without a name.

“I went not forth to battle,
 I carried friendly men,
The children played about my decks,
 The women sang—and then—
And then—the sun blushed scarlet
 And Heaven hid its face,
The world that God created
 Became a shameful place!

“My wrong cries out for vengeance,
 The blow that sent me here
Was aimed in Hell.  My dying scream
 Has reached Jehovah’s ear.
Not all the seven oceans
 Shall wash away that stain;
Upon a brow that wears a crown
 I am the brand of Cain.”

When God’s great voice assembles
 The fleet on Judgment Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise
 In sea and strait and bay.
Though they have lain for ages
 Beneath the changeless flood,
They shall be white as silver,
 But one—shall be like blood.