The Brooklyn o'er the deep espies
His flame-wreathed side:
She sets her banners on the skies
In fearful pride.
On, to the harbor's mouth of fire,
Fierce for the fray,
She darts, an eagle from his eyre,
Upon her prey.
She meets the brave Teresa there—
Sigh, sigh for Spain!—
And beats her clanging armor bare
With glittering rain.
The bold Vizcaya's lightnings glance
Into the throng
Where loud the bannered Brooklyn chants
Her awful song.
Down swoops, in one tremendous curve,
Our Commodore;
His broadsides roll, the foemen swerve
Toward the shore.
In one great round his Brooklyn turns
And, girdling there
This side and that with glory, burns
Spain to despair.
Frightful in onslaught, fraught with fate
Her missiles hiss:
The Spaniard sees, when all too late,
A Nemesis.
The Oquendo's diapason swells;
Then, torn and lame,
Her portholes turn to yawning wells,
Geysers of flame.
Yet fierce and fiercer breaks and cries
Our rifles' dread:
The doomed Teresa shudders—lies
Stark with her dead.
How true the Brooklyn's battery speaks
Eulate knows,
As the Vizcaya staggers, shrieks
Her horrent woes.