They cast upon the golden air
One glancing, helpless, hopeless prayer,
To ask that swift and thorough be the victory falling there;
Then giants with a cheer and sigh
Burst forth to battle and to die
Beneath the walls of Morro on that morning in July.
The Teresa heads the haughty train
To bear the Admiral of Spain,
She rushes, hurtling, whitening, like the summer hurricane;
El Morro glowers in his might;
Socapa crimsons with the fight,
The Oquendo's lunging lightning blazes through her sombre night.
In desperate and eager dash
The Vizcaya hurls her vivid flash,
As wild upon the waters her enormous batteries crash;
Like spindrift scuds the fleet Colon,
And, on her bubbling wake bestrown,
Lurch, hungry for the slaughter, El Furor and El Pluton.
Round Santiago's armored crest,
Serene, in their gray valor dressed,
Our behemoths lie quiet, watching well from south and west;
Their keen eyes spy the harbor-reek;
The signals dance, the signals speak;
Then breaks the blasting riot as our broadsides storm and shriek!
Quick, poising on her eagle-wings,
The Brooklyn into battle swings;
The wide sea falls and wonders as the titan Texas springs;
The Iowa in monster-leaps
Goes bellowing above the deeps;
The Indiana thunders as her terror onward sweeps.
And, hovering near and hovering low
Until the moment strikes to go,
In gallantry the Gloucester swoops down on her double foe;
She volleys—the Furor falls lame;
Again—and the Pluton's aflame,
Hurrah, on high she's tossed her! Gone the grim destroyers' fame!
And louder yet and louder roar
The Oregon's black cannon o'er
The clangor and the booming all along the Cuban shore.
She's swifting down her valkyr-path,
Her sword sharp for the aftermath,
With levin in her glooming, like Jehovah in His wrath.
Great ensigns snap and shine in air
Above the furious onslaught where
Our sailors cheer the battle, danger but a thing to dare;
Our gunners speed, as oft they've sped,
Their hail of shrilling, shattering lead,
Swift-sure our rifles rattle, and the foeman's decks are red.
Like baying bloodhounds lope our ships,
Adrip with fire their cannons' lips;
We scourge the fleeing Spanish, whistling weals from scorpion-whips;
Till, livid in the ghastly glare,
They tremble on in dread despair,
And thoughts of victory vanish in the carnage they must bear.
Where Cuban coasts in beauty bloom,
Where Cuban breakers swirl and boom,
The Teresa's onset slackens in a scarlet spray of doom;
[Near Nimanima's greening hill]
The streaming flames cry down her will,
Her vast hull blows and blackens, prey to every mortal ill.