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THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: WHAT was it kept you so long, brave German submersible? | |
| We have been very anxious lest matters had not gone well | |
| With you and the precious cargo of your country’s drugs and dyes. | |
| But here you are at last, and the sight is good for our eyes, | |
| Glad to welcome you up and out of the caves of the sea, | 5 |
| And ready for sale or barter, whatever your will may be. | |
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THE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMERSIBLE: Oh, do not be impatient, good friends of this neutral land, | |
| That we have been so tardy in reaching your eager strand. | |
| We were stopped by a curious chance just off the Irish coast, | |
| Where the mightiest wreck ever was lay crowded with a host | 10 |
| Of the dead that went down with her; and some prayed us to bring them here | |
| That they might be at home with their brothers and sisters dear. | |
| We Germans have tender hearts, and it grieved us sore to say | |
| We were not a passenger ship, and to most we must answer nay, | |
| But if from among their hundreds they could somehow a half-score choose | 15 |
| We thought we could manage to bring them, and we would not refuse. | |
| They chose, and the women and children that are greeting you here are those | |
| Ghosts of the women and children that the rest of the hundred chose. | |
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THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: What guff are you giving us, Captain? We are able to tell, we hope, | |
| A dozen ghosts, when we see them, apart from a periscope. | 20 |
| Come, come, get down to business! For time is money, you know, | |
| And you must make up in both to us for having been so slow. | |
| Better tell this story of yours to the submarines, for we | |
| Know there was no such wreck, and none of your spookery. | |
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THE GHOSTS OF THE LUSITANIA WOMEN AND CHILDREN: Oh, kind kin of our murderers, take us back when you sail away; | 25 |
| Our own kin have forgotten us. O Captain, do not stay! | |
| But hasten, Captain, hasten. The wreck that lies under the sea | |
| Shall be ever the home for us this land can never be. | |
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