"Then starboard and larboard, and this way and that,
We bang'd them and raked them, and laid their masts flat,
Till, one after t'other, they haul'd down their flag,
And an end, for that time, put to Johnny Bull's brag.
"The Detroit, and Queen Charlotte, and Lady Prevost,
Not able to fight or run, gave up the ghost:
And not one of them all from our grapplings got free,
Though we'd fifty-four guns, and they just sixty-three.
"Smite my limbs! but they all got their bellies full then,
And found what it was, boys, to buckle with men,
Who fight, or, what's just the same, think that they fight
For their country's free trade and their own native right.
"Now give us a bumper to Elliott and those
Who came up, in good time, to belabor our foes:
To our fresh-water sailors we'll toss off one more,
And a dozen, at least, to our young commodore.
"And though Britons may brag of their ruling the ocean,
And that sort of thing, by the Lord, I've a notion,
I'll bet all I'm worth—who takes it—who takes?
Though they're lords of the sea, we'll be lords of the lakes."
Immediately on receiving the surrender, Perry wrote with a pencil on the back of an old letter, using his cap for a desk, his famous message, "We have met the enemy and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop," and dispatched it to General Harrison.
PERRY'S VICTORY—A SONG
[September 10, 1813]
Columbia, appear!—To thy mountains ascend,
And pour thy bold hymn to the winds and the woods;
Columbia, appear!—O'er thy tempest-harp bend,
And far to the nations its trumpet-song send,—
Let thy cliff-echoes wake, with their sun-nourish'd broods,
And chant to the desert—the skies—and the floods,
And bid them remember,
The Tenth of September,
When our Eagle came down from her home in the sky—
And the souls of our heroes were marshall'd on high.