Then Uncle Sam’l went to war and hadn’t any boats,
Or not enough to guard the stormy green,
And so he said to Mr. Wall:
“I’ll take your six-feet-over-all
And set it out to get the call
Upon the submarine.”
“A cruising-fighter? Never!” (The experts chorused that.)
“She’ll sink before she’s half-way out to France”;
But Sam cut out her bathtubs white,
He painted her a perfect fright
And loaded her with dynamite;
Says he: “I’ll take a chance.”
“Good-night!” said Wall of Wall St.; the experts said it, too;
But Uncle Sam was sot and sibylline;
His little plan, it warn’t a josh:
Wall’s boat ’s as dry ’s a mackintosh;
She fights, b’ gum; what’s more, b’ gosh,
She gits the submarine!
A DIRGE
VICTOR PEROWNE
in The London Times
THOU art no longer here,
No longer shall we see thy face.
But, in that other place,
Where may be heard
The roar of the world rushing down the wantways of the stars;
And the silver bars
Of heaven’s gate
Shine soft and clear:
Thou mayest wait.
No longer shall we see
Thee walking in the crowded streets,
But where the ocean of the Future beats
Against the flood-gates of the Present, swirling to this earth,
Another birth
Thou mayest have;
Another Arcady
May thee receive.
Not here thou dost remain,
Thou art gone far away,
Where, at the portals of the day,
The hours ever dance in ring, a silvern-footed throng,
While time looks on,
And seraphs stand
Choiring an endless strain
On either hand.
Thou canst return no more;
Not as the happy time of spring
Comes after winter burgeoning
On wood and wold in folds of living green, for thou art dead.