[VOL: This poem was inspired by the death
of the German munitions manufacturer Alfred Krupp.
The poem so impressed LA Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis
that he printed it on the editorial page and gave J.S. McGroarty
an LA Times column that he called "Seen from the Green
Verdugo Hills" which ran for over 40 years.]
 

Dead!  and the belching thunder
Of the guns on sea and shore,
'Though they rive the world asunder,
Can break on his ears no more.

Forth from his hands he sent them,
Wherever men met as foes;
And, wherever strong hands unbent them,
The cry of the wounded rose.

The groans of the maimed and dying,
The moans of the ebbing heart,
On the fields of the dead, low lying,
Were praise of his master art.

Wherever the ocean's billows
The ships of the fleet have sped,
Deep over the coral pillows,
Where the wild seas keep their dead;

Wherever, in rush or rally,
Man clashed in the strife with man,
In Paardeberg's war-strewn valley,
Or the red heights of Sedan,

Death and blood and disaster
Spoke his great name in dread;
And now, in his shroud, the master
That fashioned the guns lies dead.