On this date, July 30, in 1918 Catholic poet-soldier, thirty-two-year-old, father of five, Joyce Kilmer died on the battlefield.
Historian Sister M. Fides Shepperson soon eulogized Kilmer, in writing, in her nationally syndicated newspaper column. She has the date of death as August 1, but it was later determined to be July 30.
NB: To fully appreciate her emotion you may want to read this aloud—like much of her prose, it is so poetic it nearly demands to read aloud.
Though Kilmer is best remembered for his poem “Trees,” I submit for your appreciation his “The White Ships and Red,” a stirring poem inspired by the tragic sinking of the defenseless Lusitania in May 1915 by a German U-boat, torpedoed without warning.
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The White Ships and Red
With dropping 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 Judgement 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 of Judgement 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.
Wow! What a poem. Thank you