THE FRIGATE-GHOST
Yes, you may build her again
As she was when she sailed the sea;
She may bear the brave old name,
And the harbors hail her the same;
’Tis her semblance, it is not she!
She is gone from our mortal ken.
I know not how or when,
But her spirit escaped away
From the dock and the dull decay,
From the uses of unprized age
And the changes wrought of men;
Like a wild sea-bird from a cage,
Her soul took flight from the form
To the tides that none can tame,
To the restless fields of her fame,
To the wet salt wind and the storm!
Somewhere she ranges free,
Stately, a shape of light,
Revisiting leagues of sea
Illumined with glorious fight.
She hangs like a lucent cloud
On the coast where her guns spoke loud,
In the gates of the Moslem proud,
Till the Crescent grew faint with fright.
Exultant she bounds on the brine,
Tracing the course of the race
When the Æolus held her in chase,
And the Belvidere and the Shannon,
And the Africa, ship-o’-the-line,
With another, doomed to her cannon,
To be blazoned in flame at the last,
When the grim sea-duel was done:
God rest the souls that passed
Ere the Guerrière’s leeward gun!
Ere the noblest flag on the sea
Came down to the Stripes and Stars!
Oh, the frigate-ghost, as she ranges free,
Thrills yet through her spectral spars!
Aye, the old pride stirs her still
As she sails and sails at will;
In her cross-trees memories nestle,
Though she walks the wave a ghost.
Well she minds the wary wrestle
When her shot poured hot as lava
On the shattered, stubborn Java,
Off the dim Brazilian coast;
And she haunts the moonlit seas
Where her crashing broadsides broke
Through the drift of silvered smoke
While she waged a double battle
In the waters Portuguese.
Still the ghostly muskets rattle,
And the old drums beat, beat, beat,
Like a heart that will not die;
And the old fife whistles high,
And the powder-scent is rank,
And she feels on her hollow plank
The old, dead heroes’ feet!
Ah, never sailor-man
Has seen her where she ranges,
Escaped from time and changes
As only spirits can,
Clear, absolute, and free!
Yet, some stern hour to be,
When a fight is fought at sea,
And the right of the fight is ours,
And the cause of the right is failing,
There shall rise a frigate sailing,
A luminous presence paling
Through the powder-cloud where it lowers;
Pale smoke from her side shall break,
Pale faces over her railing
Shall frown, till the foemen shake
With fear and bewildered passion,
Marking her old-time fashion,
In the turrets of hostile powers;
And then shall the rumor run
Like a lightning from lip to lip,
And shall leap from ship to ship,
While the wounded gunner reels
Again to his reeking gun,
Touched with a magic that heals,
Feeling this vision remind him
That the strong Dead fight behind him:
“’Tis the ghost of Ironsides,
Come back from the tameless tides,
From the ocean-fields unbounded,
Complete with her scattered spars,
Manned with the shades of her tars,
With the smoke of her guns surrounded,
To succor the Stripes and Stars!”