The author of the poem, Rudyard Kipling, had lost his only son in the war. Kipling, a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was its literary advisor and wrote many of the inscriptions and other written material produced for the Commission. The first publication of the poem in the UK was in The Times of 15 May 1922, while the poem also appeared in the USA in the New York World. The text of the poem includes references to Nieuport (a coastal port down-river from Ypres), and "four Red Rivers", said to be the River Somme, the River Marne, the River Oise and the River Yser, which all flow through the World War I battlefields. The poem also talks about "a carven stone" and "a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross", referring to the Stone of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice