For whom lie dead in Kristiansand
And buried by a foreign hand
Can be no scent of Scottish Seas,
Nor tang of fir upon the breeze,
No sight of Dundee's chimney stacks,
Indeed, their earth-dimmed hearing lacks
Sound of the pipes upon the hills,
Sound of the river and the rills,
Nor all the whisperings of the Usk
Sounds of the rivers and the rills,
Nor all the whisperings of the Usk
Can follow them into the dusk;
And their cold fingers cannot touch
The Fifeshire girls they loved as much
As any friend, who made his way
Across the sky that fatal day.
And yet there only lies between
Their hearts and mine the grey and green
Dark Northern sea. How should we fail
To clasp our hands across a veil
That scarce divides their lives and mine,
And is so slight and frail and fine
That still I hear them call to me
Across two hundred miles of sea?
Poem dedicated to P/O. Charles MacLaren and his crew.
