On our high poop-deck he stood,
And round him ranged the men
Who have made their birthright good
Of manhood once and again,—
Lords of helm and of sail,
Tried in tempest and gale,
Bronzed in battle and wreck.
Bell and Bailey grandly led
Each his line of the Blue and Red;
Wainwright stood by our starboard rail;
Thornton fought the deck.
And I mind me of more than they,
Of the youthful, steadfast ones,
That have shown them worthy sons
Of the seamen passed away.
Tyson conned our helm that day;
Watson stood by his guns.
What thought our Admiral then,
Looking down on his men?
Since the terrible day
(Day of renown and tears!),—
When at anchor the Essex lay,—
Holding her foes at bay,—
When a boy by Porter's side he stood,
Till deck and plank-sheer were dyed with blood;
'Tis half a hundred years,—
Half a hundred years to a day!
Who could fail with him?
Who reckon of life or limb?
Not a pulse but beat the higher!
There had you seen, by the starlight dim,
Five hundred faces strong and grim:
The Flag is going under fire!
Right up by the fort,
With her helm hard aport,
The Hartford is going under fire!
The way to our work was plain.
Caldwell had broken the chain
(Two hulks swung down amain
Soon as 'twas sundered).
Under the night's dark blue,
Steering steady and true,
Ship after ship went through,
Till, as we hove in view,
"Jackson" out-thundered!
Back echoed "Philip!" ah! then
Could you have seen our men.
How they sprung in the dim night haze,
To their work of toil and of clamor!
How the boarders, with sponge and rammer
And their captains, with cord and hammer,
Kept every muzzle ablaze.
How the guns, as with cheer and shout—
Our tackle-men hurled them out—
Brought up on the water-ways!
First, as we fired at their flash,
'Twas lightning and black eclipse,
With a bellowing roll and crash.
But soon, upon either bow,
What with forts and fire-rafts and ships
(The whole fleet was hard at it now),
All pounding away!—and Porter
Still thundering with shell and mortar,—
'T was the mighty sound and form!
(Such you see in the far South,
After long heat and drought,
As day draws nigh to even,
Arching from north to south,
Blinding the tropic sun,
The great black bow comes on,
Till the thunder-veil is riven,—
When all is crash and levin,
And the cannonade of heaven
Rolls down the Amazon!)
But, as we worked along higher,
Just where the river enlarges,
Down came a pyramid of fire,—
It was one of your long coal barges.
(We had often had the like before.)
'T was coming down on us to larboard,
Well in with the eastern shore;
And our pilot, to let it pass round
(You may guess we never stopped to sound),
Giving us a rank sheer to starboard,
Ran the Flag hard and fast aground!
'T was nigh abreast of the Upper Fort,
And straightway a rascal ram
(She was shaped like the Devil's dam)
Puffed away for us, with a snort,
And shoved it, with spiteful strength,
Right alongside of us to port.
It was all of our ship's length,—
A huge, crackling Cradle of the Pit!
Pitch-pine knots to the brim,
Belching flame red and grim,
What a roar came up from it!
Well, for a little it looked bad:
But these things are, somehow, shorter,
In the acting than in the telling;
There was no singing out or yelling,
Or any fussing and fretting,
No stampede, in short;
But there we were, my lad,
All afire on our port quarter,
Hammocks ablaze in the netting,
Flames spouting in at every port,
Our fourth cutter burning at the davit
(No chance to lower away and save it).