Mid-ocean in War-time

(For My Mother)



The fragile splendour of the level sea,
The moon's serene and silver-veiled face,
Make of this vessel an enchanted place
Full of white mirth and golden sorcery.
Now, for a time, shall careless laughter be
Blended with song, to lend song sweeter grace,
And the old stars, in their unending race,
Shall heed and envy young humanity.

And yet to-night, a hundred leagues away,
These waters blush a strange and awful red.
Before the moon, a cloud obscenely grey
Rises from decks that crash with flying lead.
And these stars smile their immemorial way
On waves that shroud a thousand newly dead!

Alfred Joyce Kilmer

Alfred Joyce Kilmer was an American poet, journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and soldier. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world, he is best known for a short poem titled 'Trees' (1913), which was published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Kilmer's work has been widely anthologized and remains well-loved. He died during World War I in France at the age of 31.

Alfred Joyce Kilmer

The Cathedral of Rheims

Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Simple Poetry

Martin

Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Simple Poetry

The Singing Girl

Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Simple Poetry

Pennies

Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Simple Poetry

English

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Loch Torridon

To E. H.


The dawn of night more fair than morning rose,
Stars hurrying forth on stars, as snows on snows
Haste when the wind and winter bid them speed.
Vague miles of moorland road behind us lay
Scarce traversed ere the day
Sank, and the sun forsook us at our need,
Belated. Where we thought to have rested, rest
Was none; for soft Maree's dim quivering breast,
Bound round with gracious inland girth of green
And fearless of the wild wave-wandering West,
Shone shelterless for strangers; and unseen
The goal before us lay
Of all our blithe and strange and strenuous day.
For when the northering road faced westward, when
The dark sharp sudden gorge dropped seaward, then,
Beneath the stars, between the steeps, the track
We followed, lighted not...

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The White Ships and the Red

(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?"...

Alfred Joyce Kilmer

By The Seaside

The sun is couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest,
And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest;
Air slumberswave with wave no longer strives,
Only a heaving of the deep survives,
A tell-tale motion! soon will it be laid,
And by the tide alone the water swayed.
Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild
Of light with shade in beauty reconciled,
Such is the prospect far as sight can range,
The soothing recompence, the welcome change.
Where, now, the ships that drove before the blast,
Threatened by angry breakers as they passed;
And by a train of flying clouds bemocked;
Or, in the hollow surge, at anchor rocked
As on a bed of death? Some lodge in peace,
Saved by His care who bade the tempest cease;
And some, too heedless of past danger, court
Fresh gales to ...

William Wordsworth

Seaweed

When descends on the Atlantic
    The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
    The toiling surges,
Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
    Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
    Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
    The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
    Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas;--

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
    On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
    Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.

So when storms of wil...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

At Sea

        When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion,
            Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod,
        We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean,
            A great gray hush, like the shadow of God.

        The sky dome cut with its compass in sunder
            A circle of sea from the darkened land,--
        A circle of tremulous waste and wonder,
            O'er which one groped with a childish hand.

        The true stars came to their stations in heaven,
            The false stars shivered deep down in the sea,
        And the white crests went like monsters, driven
            By winds that never would let them be,

        And there, where the elements mingled and muttered,
            We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart,

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The Tides

I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
    The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
    And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,
    As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
Then heard I, more distinctly than before,
    The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,
    And hurrying came on the defenceless land
    The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.
All thought and feeling and desire, I said,
    Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song
    Have ebbed from me forever!    Suddenly o'er me
They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
    And in a tumult of delight, and strong
    As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow