The friendly vista of the Camden shore,
The stone where they had locked their hearts in one.
So time went by. The armistice came on,
And Mary radiant, for her lad no more
Would run the gauntlet of the submarines,
And he had heard a chance to get a job
As watchman up at Cramps'. Just one more voyage
He planned; then he would quit and they'd begin.
So, late one night, in the familiar park
They said good-by. It was their last good-by,
As Mary said: his ship was due to sail
Day after next, and he would have no chance
To come again. She turned beside the stone
To fix in view that place of happy tryst,
The quiet leafless park with powdered frost,
The lamps of the policeboat, red and green.
The Roald Amundsen was Larsen's ship.
She lay at the refinery, Point Breeze,
Taking on oil for Liverpool. The day
She was to sail, somehow she caught on fire.
A petaled rose of hell, she roared in flame—
The burning liquid overflowed her decks,
The dock and oil-scummed river blazing, too.
Her men had little chance. They leaped for life
Into the river, but the paraffin
Blazing along the surface, hemmed them in.
They either burned or drowned, and Alf was one.
The irony of fate has little heed
For tenderness of hearts. The blistered hulk,
Burnt, sunk and raised, with twisted, blackened plates,
A gaunt and gutted horror, seared and charred,
