And then we did not meet again; I heard that he was dead. The savage sea, not you nor me, Knows where he is instead. _SOUTH PACIFIC_ How often had the sun been red The sky as deep a blue Behind long, tired stretched-out clouds When I was then with you. How often had the evening sea Which you so much admired With archipelagos of foam Been bright and ruby-fired. Oh, all these things tonight are here Upon a distant sea, But I have found no other one To stand and watch with me. _DECK-APE_ He was just a little deck-ape With a happy kind of smile, And a line of boyish chatter That could make you laugh awhile. He was just a little deck-ape Always ready with a hand When a shipmate needed someone Who would help or understand. He was just a little deck-ape, And we buried him at sea When he stopped a strafer’s bullet That was meant, I think, for me. _SAILOR BOY_ Upon a railway station bench he lies, Majestic image of a heathen god Cast down unknown centuries of time, And on his back for all the world to see. He sleeps the silence of unspoken love, A smile upon his lips, his cheeks aglow With all the fire of his rhythmic heart Betraying there the secret of his dream. And breath and life are one where fills his chest, And where the texture of his thighs impress The pagan phallic frontlet in his loins He testifies unknowingly to youth. Unstirring in the rapture of his thoughts He slumbers in the wakeful watch Of envy and desire! _AVENGE_ Avenge! Avenge! Great sword of God, The massacre of these Ten thousand Polish soldier lads, All hung from gallows’ trees. Send down Thy angels armed with fire, Send down Thy fiery lake, Avenge the tortured, fiercely marred, And killed for killing’s sake, Brave prisoners of Guam, Bataan, Corregidor, and Wake! O hasten, hasten, wrath of God! Five times five thousand slain In one red week of murderous lust, New Christs, new cross, new pain! Our patience and our mercy wait While they who slaughter don’t. Annihilate! Annihilate! We’ll do it if You won’t! _THE CROSSING OF THE RHINE_ And what is the talk we make tonight As we fill our glasses amber bright And drink to the guys who are in the fight, The crossing of the Rhine. And the song we sing is a simple thing Of a tune that moves with a martial swing To a set of words that have caught the ring, The crossing of the Rhine. We laugh and we jest, and we wish them well, And then we remember the lads who fell By blasted bridge and screaming shell, The crossing of the Rhine.