Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 44: MID-OCEAN IN WAR-TIME (For My Mother)

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About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

MID-OCEAN IN WAR-TIME
(For My Mother)

The fragile splendour of the level sea,

The moon’s serene and silver-veilèd face,

Make of this vessel an enchanted place

Full of white mirth and golden sorcery.

Now, for a time, shall careless laughter be

Blended with song, to lend song sweeter grace,

And the old stars, in their unending race,

Shall heed and envy young humanity.

And yet to-night, a hundred leagues away,

These waters blush a strange and awful red.

Before the moon, a cloud obscenely grey

Rises from decks that crash with flying lead.

And these stars smile their immemorial way

On waves that shroud a thousand newly dead!