THE RIVER FIGHT.
By HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL.
[Admiral Farragut was so impressed with this irregular but spirited description of the river battle below New Orleans that he sought out the author and their acquaintance ended in a warm friendship. Brownell having expressed a desire to witness a naval conflict, Farragut took him on board the Flagship Hartford at the time of the storming of the Mobile forts, and the poet repaid the courtesy with the poem which appears elsewhere in this collection, called “The Bay Fight.”—Editor.]
No coast-line clear and true, Granite and deep-sea blue, On that dismal shore you pass, Surf-worn boulder or sandy beach,— But ooze-flats as far as the eye can reach, With shallows of water-grass; Reedy Savannahs, vast and dun, Lying dead in the dim March sun; Huge, rotting trunks and roots that lie Like the blackened bones of shapes gone by, And miles of sunken morass.
No lovely, delicate thing Of life o’er the waste is seen But the cayman couched by his weedy spring, And the pelican, bird unclean, Or the buzzard, flapping with heavy wing, Like an evil ghost o’er the desolate scene.