Where the Pluton lies lifts the red leven—
Fire-clouds prodigious dash against Heaven;
Where the Pluton lay void swells the ocean;
Shattered and sunken, spent her devotion;
Waves where wet graves were,
Deep in the ocean.
Shrieking toward Cuba, agonized, broken,
El Furor's hasting, her fate bespoken;
There in the shallows 'mid the white surges
Her guns, deserted, moan out their dirges;
Swelling and knelling
Through the white surges.
Wainwright in mercy does his endeavor:
Some he shall rescue; more rest for ever—
Say a prayer for them, one kindly Ave.
Spain weeps her wounded, wails a lost navy;
Fails them, bewails them,
Says them an Ave.
Off Santiago, when from beleaguer
Rushed forth Cervera, daring and eager,
Who stood Spain's onset? Who met and tossed her?
Wainwright, the Maine's man, glad on the Gloucester!
Boast him, and toast him!
Wainwright! The Gloucester!
Wallace Rice.
The evolutions of the Brooklyn, under Commodore Winfield Scott Schley, have been the subject of bitter controversy. Schley, finding himself too near the Spaniards, made a wide turn away from them, wishing, he afterwards alleged, to preserve his ship, which was the fastest of our squadron, to head off any of the Spanish ships which might escape.
THE BROOKLYN AT SANTIAGO
[July 3, 1898]
'Twixt clouded heights Spain hurls to doom
Ships stanch and brave,
Majestic, forth they flash and boom
Upon the wave.
El Morro raises eyes of hate
Far out to sea,
And speeds Cervera to his fate
With cannonry.