Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SOLDIER'S SEA CHANGE, by DANIEL HUGH VERDER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SOLDIER'S SEA CHANGE, by                    
First Line: What do you carry, slow moving ship
Last Line: Crimsons the dismal flowing flood.
Subject(s): Death; Patriotism; Soldiers; War - Casualties (statistics, Etc.); World War I; Youth; Dead, The; First World War


WHAT do you carry, slow moving ship,
As off from your moorings you quietly slip?

I carry five thousand silent hearts,
From here in France and foreign parts.
My moorings are bloody, and bloody my marge;
No lordly craft but a funeral barge.

What tender youths you take to sea,
Where the waters are wide and the graves are free!

These youths are as fair as the earth can give,
In death they lie when they ought to live.
On other shores may they emerge;
With song and shout their victory urge.

Soldiers, farewell wherever you go;
For you, many heads are bowed in woe.

And the ship moves on, and on, and on,
Where whisper the waves of oblivion.
And all the way the trickling blood
Crimsons the dismal flowing flood.





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