THE SACK OF BALTIMORE
The summer sun is falling soft an Carbery's
hundred isles—
The summer's sun is gleaming still through
Gabriel's rough defiles—
Old Innisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a
moulting bird;
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is
heard:
The hookers lie upon the beach; the children
cease their play;
The gossips leave the little inn; the households
kneel to pray—
And full of love, and peace, and rest—its daily
labour o'er—
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of
Baltimore.
A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with
midnight there;
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth,
or sea, or air,
The massive capes, and ruined towers, seem
conscious of the calm;
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing
heavy balm.
So still the night, these two long barques, round
Dunashad that glide
Must trust their oars—methinks not few—
against the ebbing tide—
Oh! some sweet mission of true love must urge
them to the shore—
They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs
in Baltimore!
All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky
street,
And these must be the lover's friends, with
gently gliding feet—
A stifled gasp! a dreamy noise! "The roof is in
a flame!"
From out their beds, and to their doors, rush
maid, and sire, and dame—
And meet, upon the threshold stone, the gleam-
ing sabre's fall,
And o'er each black and bearded face the white
or crimson shawl—
The yell of "Allah!" breaks above the prayer,
and shriek, and roar—
Oh, blessed God! the Algerine is lord of
Baltimore!
Then flung the youth his naked hand against the
shearing sword;
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which
her son was gor'd;
Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-
babes clutching wild;
Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled
with the child:
But see, yon pirate strangled lies, and crushed
with splashing heel,
While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his
Syrian steel—
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers
yield their store,
There's one hearth well avengèd in the sack of
Baltimore!
Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds
began to sing—
They see not now the milking maids—deserted
is the spring!
Midsummer day—this gallant rides from distant
Bandon's town—
These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that
skiff from Affadown;
They only found the smoking walls, with
neighbours' blood besprent,
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile
they wildly went—
Then dash'd to sea, and passed Cape Clear, and
saw five leagues before
The pirate-galleys vanishing that ravaged Balti-
more!
Oh! some must tug the galley's oar, and some
must tend the steed—
This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that
a Bey's jerreed.
Oh! some are for the arsenals, by beauteous
Dardanelles;
And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy
dells.
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen
for the Dey—
She's safe—she's dead—she stabb'd him in the
midst of his Serai;
And when, to die a death of fire, that noble maid
they bore,
She only smiled—O'Driscoll's child—she
thought of Baltimore.
Tis two long years since sunk the town be-
neath that bloody band,
And all around its trampled hearths a larger
concourse stand,
Where, high upon a gallows-tree, a yelling
wretch is seen—
'Tis Hackett of Dungarvan—he who steered the
Algerine!
He fell amid a sullen shout, with scarce a pass-
ing prayer,
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a
hundred there—
Some muttered of MacMurchadh, who brought
the Norman o'er—
Some cursed him with Iscariot, that day in
Baltimore.
-T. Davis.