Never once asking the when or why,
But ready, all hours, to battle and die,
They went into fight with a terrible cry,
Counting no odds, and, victors or slain,
Meeting fortune or fate, with an equal eye,
Defiant of death and pain.
V.
Dread are the tales of the wondrous deep,
And well do the billows their secrets keep,
And sound should those savage old sailors sleep,
If sleep they may after such a life;
Where every dark passion, alert and aleap,
Made slumber itself a strife.
VI.
What voices of horror, through storm and surge,
Sang in the perishing ear its dirge,
As, raging and rending, o'er Hell's black verge,
Each howling soul sank to its doom;
And what thunder-tones from the deeps emerge,
As yawns for its prey the tomb!
VII.
We plough the same seas which the rovers trod,
But with better faith in the saving God,
And bear aloft and carry abroad
The starry cross, our sacred sign,
Which, never yet sullied by crime or fraud,
Makes light o'er the midnight brine.
VIII.
And we rove not now on a lawless quest,
With passions foul in the hero's breast,
Moved by no greed at the fiend's behest,
Gloating in lust o'er a bloody prey;
But from tyrant robber the spoil to wrest,
And tear down his despot sway!