A last great roar the Scharnhorst gave,
Then rolled her fires beneath the wave,
A wretched, moving, dying thing
Within the watchful naval ring.
The black, salt sea her vitals drank,
And, quenched her thirst, the Scharnhorst sank.
LITTLE BOYS AND LITTLE DOGS
Little boys and little dogs
Are made for one another.
For show me, sir, a little dog
Just taken from its mother
That will not find a tenderness
And clumsy kind of joy
In the care, and taking care, of
A loving little boy.
U.S.S. OKLAHOMA RETURNS TO HER CREW
We did not recognize her as she sank among us here,
A wretched hulk, dismasted, disemboweled and stripped of gear.
We did not recognize her. They were selling her for junk
When she listed like a derelict, abandoned, wrecked, and sunk.
For we were sea-dead sailors wandering aimlessly the deep,
Without a ship, without a bunk, without a place to sleep,
For we were sea-dead sailors of a ship that killed us all
When she rolled her weight upon us as the bombs began to fall.
We loved that ship. Her lines were trim, her speed was fleet and free,
And when she joined maneuvers she was beautiful to see.
That morning when torpodoes struck, with water, oil and blood
She swiftly filled and overturned her masthead in the mud.
How long we lived, how long lay dead within her flooded sides
Till all awakened, spirit-drifted, ebbing with the tides!
Oh, some were brave but could not save the other, some afraid,
And all upon a hillside we were later, gently laid.
We did not recognize her, for the ship we loved so well
Had died with us that morning in the harbor’s flaming Hell,
And our remembrance was not this, a scrapped and broken hull
That came among us timid as a shy and lonely gull.
We turned our backs upon her; she was not of our command,
But suddenly a seaman with a flashlight in his hand
Began to signal frantically. We turned and somehow knew
She was the Oklahoma and she knew we were her crew.