THE DEATH OF THE LUSITANIA
O LUSITANIA, Empress of the Sea
Art thou dead and buried in the deep.
With all thy freight of human souls,
Victim of the Huns ’most Hellish darts.
Come nations! Rise, avenge this hideous crime.
Avenge the cries of English hope,
now lying cold and dead in ocean deep.
Come nations! Rise and crush
This hideous foe: this vampire of the world, who
is no man
but just a beast of prey respecting nothing.
Laying waste to works of centuries.
Breaking hearts and homes on every side.
Come quickly, come, o’er England’s blood
Be shed in vain, her noble sons all dead
And lying on the plains. Come, nations,
Crush this vampire into dust; come quickly, come.
O Lusitania, my tears are falling for thee
Fair village of palaces, gone for evermore
Beneath the cold blue waters.
This poem was written by Mrs. Phoebe Amory of Toronto who was a Lusitania surviour. She had booked herself aboard the Lusitania at the last minute. In her published 1917 account, she claimed that her five sons were in military service – two in training, three already in service overseas – and that on April 27th she made up her mind to visit them “probably for the last time on earth.” She decisively booked passage on the May 1st sailing for an extended vacation in England.
It comes form the excellent article Lusitania - Lest we Forget by Jim Kalafus & Michael Poirier which gives some wonderful accounts of the whole episode.
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