Shelter and rest we flouted,
Jorum and pipe we scouted,
Fiddler and wench we routed.
"Fetch out the nag!" we shouted;
For a craft in the offing struggled.
"Now for a skipper juggled;
Now for a coaster stranded,
And loot in the lockers landed!"
With lantern cheerly rocking
On the nag's head, we went mocking—
Lilting of tipsy blisses,
And Bonnibel's squandered kisses.
Straight for that hell-spark steering,
Drove the doomed craft careering;
Men on her fore-deck huddled,
Sea in her wake all cruddled,
Kitty Hawk sheer before her,
And the breakers booming o'er her.
Till the rocks in their lurking stove her,
And her riven spars went over,
And she lay on her side and shivered,
And groaned to be delivered.
Boats through the black rift storming,
Foes on her quarter swarming;
Dirks in the torchlight flashing,
And the wicked hangers slashing;
Lips that were praying mangled,
Throats that were screaming, strangled;
Souls in the surges tumbling,
Vainly for foothold fumbling;
Horror of staring faces,
Gruesome in Death's grimaces—
And God's wrath overpast us,
With never a bolt to blast us!
By the brunt of our doings daunted,
We crouched where the fore-deck slanted,
Scanning each other's faces,
Graved with that horror's traces.
One, peering aft, wild-staring,
Points through the torches flaring:
"Spook of the storm, or human?
Angel, or wraith, or woman?"
Havoc and wreck surveying,
Imploring not, nor praying,
Nor death nor life refusing;
Stony and still—accusing!
Black as our hearts the creature's
Vesture, her matchless features
White as the dead. Oh! wonder
Of women high heaven under!
So she moved down upon us
(Though Death and the Fiend might shun us),
And we made passage, cowering.
Rigid and mute and towering,
Never a frown she deigned us,
Never with curse arraigned us.
One, trembling, dropped his hanger,
And swooned at the awful clangor;
But she passed on, unharking,
Her steps our doom-strokes marking,
Straight to the plank, and mounted.
"One, two, three, four!" we counted;
Till she paused, o'er the flood suspended,
Poised, her lithe arms extended.—
And the storm stood still and waited
For the stroke of the Lord, belated!
John Williamson Palmer.
Oliver Hazard Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, while in command of a squadron in the West Indies, in the summer of 1819, was attacked by yellow fever, and died after a brief illness. His body was brought to the United States in 1826 and buried at Newport.
ON THE DEATH OF COMMODORE OLIVER H. PERRY
By strangers honor'd, and by strangers mourn'd.
[August 23, 1819]