Page:Main Street and other poems, Kilmer, 1917.djvu/82

MAIN STREET AND OTHER POEMS

THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED (continued) And all her decks were scarlet

And all her shattered crew.

She sank among the white ghost ships

And stained them through and through.

The grim Titanic greeted her

"And who art thou?" she said;

"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet

Arrayed in living red?

We are the ships of sorrow

Who 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 destiny

By storm or rock or fight,

So through the lagging centuries

Ye wear your robes of white.

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