THE SPIRIT OF THE MAINE
In battle-line of sombre gray
Our ships-of-war advance,
As Red Cross Knights in holy fray
Charged with avenging lance.
And terrible shall be thy plight,
O fleet of cruel Spain!
Forever in our van doth fight
The spirit of the Maine!
As when beside Regillus Lake
The Great Twin Brethren came
A righteous fight for Rome to make
Against the Deed of Shame—
So now a ghostly ship shall doom
The fleet of treacherous Spain:
Before her guilty soul doth loom
The Spirit of the Maine!
A wraith arrayed in peaceful white,
As when asleep she lay
Above the traitorous mine that night
Within Havana Bay,
She glides before the avenging fleet,
A sign of woe to Spain,
Brave though her sons, how shall they meet
The Spirit of the Maine!
Tudor Jenks.
Spain also had a fleet, and a strong one, on the ocean. It had been gathered together at the Cape Verde Islands, and on April 29, 1898, it put to sea, and steamed westward into the Atlantic, for a destination which could only be conjectured.
THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS[15]
They say the Spanish ships are out
To seize the Spanish main;
Reach down the volume, boy, and read
The story o'er again.
How when the Spaniard had the might,
He drenched the earth, like rain,
With human blood, and made it death
To sail the Spanish main.
With torch and steel, and stake and rack,
He trampled out all truce,
Until Queen Bess her leashes slipt,
And turned her sea-dogs loose.