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.

*****

The following biographical information is from the Occasional Notes to
'A Treasury of War Poetry', 1919, edited by George Herbert Clarke.

Kilmer, Joyce. He was born in New Brunswick, N.J., December 6, 1886. He
had first joined the Officers' Reserve Corps, but soon resigned. Within
seventeen days after the entrance of the United States into the war
he left his journalistic career to enlist as a Private in the Seventh
Regiment, National Guard, New York. Shortly before the Seventh left New
York for Spartanburg, S.C., he was transferred at his own request to the
165th U.S. Infantry, formerly the 69th National Guard Regiment of New
York. He accompanied the regiment as a Private to Camp Mills, Long
Island. He was transferred from Company H to Headquarters Company, and
became Senior Regimental Statistician. The regiment sailed for France in
October, 1917, and there he was placed in the Adjutant's Office and
made Sergeant. Thereafter he was attached to the Regimental Intelligence
Staff as an observer, and showed great fidelity and courage in the tasks
to which he was assigned. He was killed in action on July 30, 1918,
while trying to locate hostile machine-guns in the Wood of the Burned
Bridge, on the Ourcq. His war writings may be found in 'Main Street, and
other Poems', and 'Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters'.

End of Project Gutenberg's Main Street and Other Poems, by Alfred Joyce Kilmer

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