In the Turret.
(March, 1862.)
Your honest heart of duty, Worden,
So helped you that in fame you dwell;
You bore the first iron battle’s burden
Sealed as in a diving-bell.
Alcides, groping into haunted hell
To bring forth King Admetus’ bride,
Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried.
What poet shall uplift his charm,
Bold Sailor, to your height of daring,
And interblend therewith the calm,
And build a goodly style upon your bearing.
Escaped the gale of outer ocean—
Cribbed in a craft which like a log
Was washed by every billow’s motion—
By night you heard of Og
The huge; nor felt your courage clog
At tokens of his onset grim:
You marked the sunk ship’s flag-staff slim,
Lit by her burning sister’s heart;
You marked, and mused: “Day brings the trial:
Then be it proved if I have part
With men whose manhood never took denial.”
A prayer went up—a champion’s. Morning
Beheld you in the Turret walled
by adamant, where a spirit forewarning
And all-deriding called:
“Man, darest thou—desperate, unappalled—
Be first to lock thee in the armored tower?
I have thee now; and what the battle-hour
To me shall bring—heed well—thou’lt share;
This plot-work, planned to be the foeman’s terror,
To thee may prove a goblin-snare;
Its very strength and cunning—monstrous error!”
“Stand up, my heart; be strong; what matter
If here thou seest thy welded tomb?
And let huge Og with thunders batter—
Duty be still my doom,
Though drowning come in liquid gloom;
First duty, duty next, and duty last;
Ay, Turret, rivet me here to duty fast!—”
So nerved, you fought wisely and well;
And live, twice live in life and story;
But over your Monitor dirges swell,
In wind and wave that keep the rites of glory.
The Temeraire.[[3]]
(Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order by the fight of the Monitor and Merrimac.)
[3] The Temeraire, that storied ship of the old English fleet, and the subject of the well-known painting by Turner, commends itself to the mind seeking for some one craft to stand for the poetic ideal of those great historic wooden warships, whose gradual displacement is lamented by none more than by regularly educated navy officers, and of all nations.
The gloomy hulls, in armor grim,
Like clouds o’er moors have met,
And prove that oak, and iron, and man
Are tough in fibre yet.
But Splendors wane. The sea-fight yields
No front of old display;
The garniture, emblazonment,
And heraldry all decay.
Towering afar in parting light,
The fleets like Albion’s forelands shine—
The full-sailed fleets, the shrouded show
Of Ships-of-the-Line.
The fighting Temeraire,
Built of a thousand trees,
Lunging out her lightnings,
And beetling o’er the seas—
O Ship, how brave and fair,
That fought so oft and well,
On open decks you manned the gun
Armorial.[[4]]
What cheering did you share,
Impulsive in the van,
When down upon leagued France and Spain
We English ran—
The freshet at your bowsprit
Like the foam upon the can.
Bickering, your colors
Licked up the Spanish air,
You flapped with flames of battle-flags—
Your challenge, Temeraire!
The rear ones of our fleet
They yearned to share your place,
Still vying with the Victory
Throughout that earnest race—
The Victory, whose Admiral,
With orders nobly won,
Shone in the globe of the battle glow—
The angel in that sun.
Parallel in story,
Lo, the stately pair,
As late in grapple ranging,
The foe between them there—
When four great hulls lay tiered,
And the fiery tempest cleared,
And your prizes twain appeared,
Temeraire!
[4] Some of the cannon of old times, especially the brass ones, unlike the more effective ordnance of the present day, were cast in shapes which Cellini might have designed, were gracefully enchased, generally with the arms of the country. A few of them—field-pieces—captured in our earlier wars, are preserved in arsenals and navy-yards.
But Trafalgar’ is over now,
The quarter-deck undone;
The carved and castled navies fire
Their evening-gun.
O, Tital Temeraire,
Your stern-lights fade away;
Your bulwarks to the years must yield,
And heart-of-oak decay.
A pigmy steam-tug tows you,
Gigantic, to the shore—
Dismantled of your guns and spars,
And sweeping wings of war.
The rivets clinch the iron-clads,
Men learn a deadlier lore;
But Fame has nailed your battle-flags—
Your ghost it sails before:
O, the navies old and oaken,
O, the Temeraire no more!