With drooping sail and pennant
  That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
  Beside a sunless beach. 
Their misty masts and funnels
  Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
  Their ghostly bulwarks glow.

Here is a Spanish galleon
  That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
  Whose hues outshone the day. 
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
  And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
  Death’s livid, dreadful white.

White as the ice that clove her
  That unforgotten day,
Among her pallid sisters
  The grim Titanic lay. 
And through the leagues above her
  She looked aghast and said: 
“What is this living ship that comes
  Where every ship is dead?”

The ghostly vessels trembled
  From ruined stern to prow;
What was this thing of terror
  That broke their vigil now? 
Down through the startled ocean
  A mighty vessel came,
Not white, as all dead ships must be,
  But red, like living flame!

The pale green waves above her
  Were swiftly, strangely dyed,
By the great scarlet stream that flowed
  From out her wounded side. 
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.

“But never crashing iceberg
  Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
  The way that I must go. 
My wounds that stain 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 scarlet
  And Heaven hid its face,
The world that God created
  Became a shameful place!

“My wrongs cry out for vengeance,
  The blow that sent me here
Was aimed in Hell.  My dying scream
  Has reached Jehovah’s ear. 
Not all the seven oceans
  Shall wash away that stain;
Upon the brow that wears a crown
  I am the brand of Cain.”

When God’s great voice assembles
  The fleet on Judgment Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise
  In sea and strait and bay. 
Though they have lain for ages
  Beneath the changeless flood,
They shall be white as silver,
  But one—­shall be like blood.