That was the last warlike service of the gallant Old Ironsides, the most famous ship of the American Navy. Years passed by and her timbers rotted away, as they had done once before. Some of the wise heads in the Navy Department, men without a grain of sentiment, decided that she was no longer of any use and should be broken up for old timber.
But if they had no love for the good old ship, there were those who had; and a poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, came to the rescue. This is the poem by which he saved the ship:
THE OLD IRONSIDES.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
O! better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale.
There was no talk of destroying the Old Ironsides after that. The man that did it would have won eternal disgrace. She still floats, and no doubt she will float, as long as two of her glorious old timbers hang together.