In a twinkling, the flames had risen
Halfway to maintop and mizzen,
Darting up the shrouds like snakes!
Ah, how we clanked at the brakes,
And the deep, steaming pumps throbbed under,
Sending a ceaseless flow.
Our topmen, a dauntless crowd,
Swarmed in rigging and shroud:
There ('twas a wonder!)
The burning ratlines and strands
They quenched with their bare, hard hands;
But the great guns below
Never silenced their thunder.
At last, by backing and sounding,
When we were clear of grounding,
And under headway once more,
The whole rebel fleet came rounding
The point. If we had it hot before,
'Twas now from shore to shore,
One long, loud, thundering roar,—
Such crashing, splintering, and pounding,
And smashing as you never heard before!
But that we fought foul wrong to wreck,
And to save the land we loved so well,
You might have deemed our long gun-deck
Two hundred feet of hell!
For above all was battle,
Broadside, and blaze, and rattle,
Smoke and thunder alone
(But, down in the sick-bay,
Where our wounded and dying lay,
There was scarce a sob or a moan).
And at last, when the dim day broke,
And the sullen sun awoke,
Drearily blinking
O'er the haze and the cannon smoke,
That ever such morning dulls,—
There were thirteen traitor hulls
On fire and sinking!
Now, up the river!—though mad Chalmette
Sputters a vain resistance yet,
Small helm we gave her our course to steer,—
'Twas nicer work than you well would dream,
With cant and sheer to keep her clear
Of the burning wrecks that cumbered the stream.
The Louisiana, hurled on high,
Mounts in thunder to meet the sky!
Then down to the depths of the turbid flood,—
Fifty fathom of rebel mud!
The Mississippi comes floating down,
A mighty bonfire from off the town;
And along the river, on stocks and ways,
A half-hatched devil's brood is ablaze,—
The great Anglo-Norman is all in flames
(Hark to the roar of her trembling frames!),
And the smaller fry that Treason would spawn
Are lighting Algiers like an angry dawn!
From stem to stern, how the pirates burn,
Fired by the furious hands that built!
So to ashes forever turn
The suicide wrecks of wrong and guilt!
But as we neared the city,
By field and vast plantation
(Ah! millstone of our nation!),
With wonder and with pity,
What crowds we there espied
Of dark and wistful faces,
Mute in their toiling places,
Strangely and sadly eyed.
Haply 'mid doubt and fear,
Deeming deliverance near
(One gave the ghost of a cheer!).