He who walks through the meadows of ChampagneAt noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,Sees it draw nearLike some great mountain set upon the plain,From radiant dawn until the close of day,Nearer it growsTo him who goesAcross the country. When tall towers layTheir shadowy pallUpon his way,He enters, whereThe solid stone is hollowed deep by allIts centuries of beauty and of prayer.Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kingsWatch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed hallsWhat chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keepAnd in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleepAn echo of the voice of Charlemagne.For God thou has known fear, when from His sideMen wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,But still the sky was bountiful and blueAnd thou wast crowned with France's love and pride.Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base;And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glassThe setting sun sees thousandfold his face;Sorrow and joy, in stately silence passAcross thy walls, the shadow and the light;Around thy lofty pillars, tapers whiteIlluminate, with delicate sharp flames,The brows of saints with venerable names,And in the night erect a fiery wall.A great but silent fervour burns in allThose simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,And know that down below, beside the Rhine —Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line —With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.Suddenly, each knows fear;Swift rumours pass, that every one must hear,The hostile banners blaze against the skyAnd by the embassies mobs rage and cry.Now war has come, and peace is at an end.On Paris town the German troops descend.They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.And now, as to so many weary men,The glorious temple gives them welcome, whenIt meets them at the bottom of the plain.At once, they set their cannon in its way.There is no gable now, nor wallThat does not suffer, night and day,As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choirAre circled, hour by hour,With thundering bands of fireAnd Death is scattered broadcast among men.And thenThat which was splendid with baptismal grace;The stately arches soaring into space,The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces,All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the LordWere struck and broken by the wanton swordOf sacrilegious lust.O beauty slain, O glory in the dust!Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!The crawling flames, like adders glisteningAte the white fabric of this lovely thing.Now from its soul arose a piteous moan,The soul that always loved the just and fair.Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,The chalices and lamps and crosiers rareWere seared and twisted by a flaming breath;The horror everywhere did range and swell,The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing,The burning sun reflects the lurid scene;The German army, fighting for its life,Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;And, as they near this placeThe imperial eagles seeBefore them in their flight,Here, in the solemn night,The old cathedral, to the years to beShowing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
The Kings of the earth are men of might,And cities are burned for their delight,And the skies rain death in the silent night,And the hills belch death all day!But the King of Heaven, Who made them all,Is fair and gentle, and very small;He lies in the straw, by the oxen's stall —Let them think of Him to-day!
With drooping sail and pennantThat never a wind may reach,They float in sunless watersBeside a sunless beach.Their mighty masts and funnelsAre white as driven snow,And with a pallid radianceTheir ghostly bulwarks glow.Here is a Spanish galleonThat once with gold was gay,Here is a Roman triremeWhose hues outshone the day.But Tyrian dyes have faded,And prows that once were brightWith rainbow stains wear onlyDeath's livid, dreadful white.White as the ice that clove herThat unforgotten day,Among her pallid sistersThe grim Titanic lay.And through the leagues above herShe looked aghast, and said:"What is this living ship that comesWhere every ship is dead?"The ghostly vessels trembledFrom ruined stern to prow;What was this thing of terrorThat broke their vigil now?Down through the startled oceanA mighty vessel came,Not white, as all dead ships must be,But red, like living flame!The pale green waves about herWere swiftly, strangely dyed,By the great scarlet stream that flowedFrom out her wounded side.And all her decks were scarletAnd all her shattered crew.She sank among the white ghost shipsAnd stained them through and through.The grim Titanic greeted her"And who art thou?" she said;"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleetArrayed in living red?We are the ships of sorrowWho spend the weary night,Until the dawn of Judgment 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 destinyBy storm or rock or fight,So through the lagging centuriesYe wear your robes of white."But never crashing icebergNor honest shot of foe,Nor hidden reef has sent meThe 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 scarletAnd Heaven hid its face,The world that God createdBecame a shameful place!"My wrong cries out for vengeance,The blow that sent me hereWas aimed in Hell. My dying screamHas reached Jehovah's ear.Not all the seven oceansShall wash away that stain;Upon a brow that wears a crownI am the brand of Cain."When God's great voice assemblesThe fleet on Judgment Day,The ghosts of ruined ships will riseIn sea and strait and bay.Though they have lain for agesBeneath 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'.