If you’ve a dream at heart, lad,
Some wilfull, noble plan,
Then cherish it within, lad,
And tell it to no man.

To friend and foe alike be dumb
On what you plan to do,
And keep that secret chamber locked
Until the work is through.

For I had dreams at heart, boy,
But talked them all away,
And now I needs must start, boy,
To dream anew today.

We lay together, he and I,
Upon a little hill,
Beneath a tree that sheltered us,
As trees so often will.

I touched his hand and felt him stir,
Expectancy of love!
And then my lips poured out my heart,
The things I told him of.

But when his heart began to speak
The bugles called to war
And he arose and left me there.
I never saw him more.

The marching columns pass me by,
All sailor lads in blue.
And some will wink, and some will smile,
The way young fellows do.

And overhead the deepening sky
More bright and bluer flows,
While one lone fleecy, sheeplike cloud
Before the dog-wind goes.

The restless leaves like pounding surf
Sound breakers through the trees.
I strip of all reality
And drown myself in these.

When spring again revisits earth,
And in the dark there comes a stirreth
Of seedlings bursting with the birth
Of summer’s future flowers,
Then will I sing you songs of love
And apple blossoms branched above
Shall know the dear devotion of
My poor poetic powers.

But wait till then—’tis winter now.
My thoughts in solitude are claimed.
Yet every wind shall hear my vow
Repeated through the hours,
It’s you alone I love,
And unashamed.

In dens of laughter when I laughed
There came a hollow sound,
Yet every night I went again
To join the merry round,
And every night I knew that there
My heart would not be found.

Then homeward, homeward be my course,
And constant be my star,
And may I not have changed too much
Because I’ve wandered far.
Their love and laughter now I need
Who home and friendship are.

Harbor of happiness,
Green and complete.
Day from the summit
Has smiled on the fleet.

Harbor deceived,
Death in the sky
Plummets to earth
Before colors shall fly.

Harbor surprised,
Torpedo and shell
Tear through the living,
Harbor of Hell!

Harbor of terror,
Harbor of death,
Harbor where fellows
Are choking for breath.

Harbor of drownings,
Thunderous sound.
Flooded compartments
Harbor the drowned.

Harbor of fire,
Harbor of flame,
Steel and humanity
Crumble the same.

Harbor determined,
Stations are manned.
Against the aggresor
The Harbor will stand.

Harbor of courage,
Gunners and guns
Speak of the worth
Of America’s sons.

Harbor of shipmates,
Sanctified flood,
Dying together,
Harbor of blood!

Harbor of wounds,
Beneath the attack,
Fighting the enemy,
Driving him back.

Harbor of smoke,
Blinding the sun.
Harbor contested,
Yet to be won.

Harbor of roaring,
Harbor ablaze,
Harbor of horror,
Harbor of praise.

Harbor resurgent,
Out of the gloom,
Self-resurrected
Out of the tomb.

Glorious Harbor,
Harbor of woe,
Harbor of vengeance
Blasting the foe.

Harbor of hours,
Endless, intense,
Harbor victorious,
Epic defense.

Dedicate Harbor,
Shipmates are there
Sleeping forever.
Harbor of prayer.

They fought off the vicious invader,
They cut him out of the air,
And he dropped through the smoke of the combat
To death and destruction there.

And our flag through the hours of battle
Flew on till the fighting was won.
Oh, beautiful, dedicate banner,
Our victory has only begun.

With such gunners as ours to defend you,
So bright and beloved in the sky,
While devotion and manhood attend you,
Brave standard, continue on high.
We were waiting that morning for colors.
Old Glory forever shall fly!

Oh, the wild race in the harbor that morning!
Prayed to his Diesel the kid engineer,
“Fail me not now, O my beautiful engine!”
Swiftly the launch and torpedo drew near.

Wake upon wake, the two masses converging,
Never a word by the sternman was said.
Oh, there was death in the harbor that morning!
Under the keel the torpedo shaft fled.

Then with the force of a mighty harpooner,
Melville’s dread hero, such bowman was he,
Then from his arm the long boat hook went plunging
Faster than death and destruction could flee.

Into the blades of the whirling propeller,
Following after, the iron hook sank,
Changing the mark where the war head exploded,
Tumbling the rocks and a tree from the bank.

Then all around them the harbor was seething,
Concussion and fire and shouting and fear,
And they, too, are dead. Dead that motor launch coxswain,
That bowman, and sternman and kid engineer!

A little while, O sacramental dead,
Unvisited a little while yet be.
You shall not lie forgotten nor alone
While ships there are, and planes, and guns, and men.
For now, more adamant, more fierce, more keen,
In permanence and purpose fixed as stars,
To finite manhood hereby we annex
The infinite almightiness of God,
And we shall be His judgment! Woe to that
Ambitious offal sprung from Hell’s abyss
Which catastrophically we shall destroy,
Annihilate, forever make extinct.

No evil feet, where from your chaliced hearts
The precious blood has spilled, shall tread that earth,
That holy, transubstantiated isle
Whose very soil is body, soul, and blood
Of restless lads who loved America!
On who so tread shall light and darkness pounce,
Vast winged horrors plummeting, destroy,
Consuming brilliance, glut-engulfing night,
Like twin devourers, feed there on them!

Ye ancient dead, who fell with Greece or Rome,
Or in the name of Allah and his prophet,
Who fell through all the cycled years of war,
Through plague, disaster, fell in civil strife,
Through revolution, famine, flood and fire,
Apocalyptic woe or freezing night,
Ye ancient dead, to whom heroic stance
And unsurrendered dignity still cling,
Receive who come among you now like gods,
Four hundred splendid, handsome, golden lads.
To them extend that comradship of men
Who live the rugged military life,
Who smile that full, good-natured kind of smile,
Most boyishly unstudied, most beloved,
Who know each other’s thoughts and wants and hopes,
Who know what prayers are said and what forgot,
Who know that greatest, crucifying love
Where friends for friends on strange new crosses die!

And you, O Seraph Outpost Garrison,
Who side by side heroically made stand,
No quarter given, none received, none asked,
Who fought those vicious legions in the three
Old elemental spheres, and of the fourth,
Almost invincible to flame and death,
Stood firmly placed before, beneath the attack
Like Milton’s epic host against all Hell,
New rest, brave lads, in consecrated sleep,
While lonely trumpets sing through muffled drums
A requiem and threnody of grief.

Ah, great Cecilia, Bach, and Handel blind,
Those last full-throated notes to swell from earth,
That trumpet song of loneliness and night,
Give it a contrapuntal theme beneath,
Whose pedal harmonies orchestrally
Shall hint of resurrection, while the pipes
And organ-pillar’d flutes resound the mode
To which the ancient dead have matched and sung.

Then light the strings until they burn as bright
And numberless as candles round a shrine,
Then start the rolling drums, and set the brass
Cannonically recalling one another,
And let the reeds’ ancestral wisdom speak,
What though at first the grave bassoons must weep
Their melancholy, febrile lamentation.
Unsheathe the horns and cut the harmonic knot.
Let full grand orchestra astound the void
With soaring fugue and metric tympani.

And in this last, let herald trumpets sing
While bright kid-trumpeteers who fell at Pearl
Resound a call to quarters there beyond!

They hung upon a wretched cross,
We watched them day by day,
And wondered how such men could live
Who hung in such a way,
Who hung in thorns of screeching steel
And had no time to pray.

We knew that soon the lads must die,
And yet they battled death
Unmindful of his awful wings
And black, consuming breath,
Unmindful when he roared at them
Or whispered what he saith.

For shattered men will die in pain,
And shaken men will weep,
And there are things which blast the blood
And through the body creep,
And men will not lie down at night
Afeared that they will sleep.

Afeared they would too deeply sleep,
That battered hearts would burst;
And though each knew that he must die,
The dawn must beckon first,
And each must feel again the grip
Of loneliness and thirst.

For none would die alone, apart,
By twos and twelves they fell,
And if a man could walk he worked,
He loaded shot and shell,
For none would die alone, apart,
Within a narrow cell.

Within a narrow cell at last
All men someday must lie,
But while their blood was in the heart
And light within the eye,
They would not leave the stand they took
Beneath the open sky.

They would not leave us, watching them,
Examples of defeat,
That when we come to look on death,
And though our ranks deplete,
Somehow we must think back to them,
The way they met it, meet!

They told of how we’d taken horse
To ride about the lea,
And how two lonely mounts were seen
Beneath a rugged tree.

They gossiped how instead of church
We went to watch the sun
Come charging over purple hills
To see the day begun,
And how we came not home again
Until that day was done.

And he and I went off to war,
Yet still their evil fed.
He never knew, not ever will,
The wretched things they said,
For he was on Corregidor,
And now the lad is dead.

The sleepers were many, but we were the few
Who wakened the quickest and fought,
And while readjustment and training were planned,
We did what we could, what we ought.

Our dead are at Henderson. Think you they rest?
They fight even now at our side,
Refusing to enter the realms of the blest
Until we have beaten the tide!

But the enemy is daring,
And his planes get through the screen,
A torpedo rips the blister
Just above the magazine.

Water fills the whole compartment,
In another fires rage,
But the guns still get their powder
And the enemy engage.

Trapped below, the lads are living,
And the hungry hoist they feed,
Though the first concussion stunned them
And their deafened ears must bleed.

Other hits, the foeman scoring,
Thunderous roars of flaming sheen,
“Save the ship from an explosion,
Flood the lower magazine!”

Lads, farewell! The air was dirty
With a lot of fume and smoke,
It’s as bad, lads, when you smother
As on briny water choke.

But the enemy’s defeated,
Thanks to you who’ll never know,
You who handled ammunition
And who had to go below!

It was on the road to High Wood
That we found him lying dead,
The soldier boy in khaki
With the broken, battered head.

No more at dawn or sunset
Will he hear the bugle note,
Nor thrill to taps ascending
From a trumpet’s silver throat.

It was on the road to High Wood
Where the maple leaves were burned
That the lad went out at morning
And nevermore returned.

There are many roads to High Wood,
There are many roads to Hell,
And the fields of wheat are rotten
Where a thousand heroes fell.

And one there is on watch at night
Who wears the strangest smile,
Because he sees a specter lad
And talks with him awhile.

Across the world he comes to me,
And far horizons dim,
And I await the day when I,
Instead, shall go to him.

Then we will sail on all the seas
That poets can recite,
And stand beside another lad,
And watch with him at night.

Then war came on. There’s always war
To readjust the past,
And he got leave and I got leave,
And home we came at last.

But I alone return tonight
And naught to battle bring,
For he is dead beneath the tree
And broken hangs the swing.