The fighting days of the Constitution—the Old Ironsides—the most famous ship of the American Navy—were done. The hastening decay of idleness eventually seized upon her timbers, and it was announced that she was to be broken up. But Oliver Wendell Holmes, of blessed memory, wrote a poem and she was spared. Generations of naval cadets have since learned the art of war and cultivated their natural love of the flag upon her decks, and now, although a hundred years have passed since the flag was first raised above her quarter-deck, her name still appears upon the naval register, and there it shall remain so long as one of her timbers will support another. And this is the poem that saved her:
Old Ironsides.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!