THE DANISH SAILOR.
Far by the Baltic shore,
Where storied Elsinore
Rears its dark walls, invincible to time;
Where yet Horatio walks,
And with Marcellus talks,
And Hamlet dreams soliloquy sublime;
Though forms of Old Romance,
Mail-clad, with shield and lance,
Are laid in 'fair Ophelia's' watery tomb,
Still, passion rules her hour,
Love, Hate, Revenge, have power,
And hearts, in Elsinore, know joy and gloom.
Grouped round a massy gun
Black sleeping in the sun,
The belted gunners list to many a tale
Told by grim Jarl, the tar,
Old Danish dog of war,
Of his young days in battle and in gale.
The medal at his breast,
The single-sleeved blue vest,
His thin, white hair, tossed by the Norway breeze,
His knotted, horny hand,
And wrinkled face, dark tanned,
Tell of the times when Nelson sailed the seas.
Steam-winged, upon the tides
A gallant vessel glides,
Two royal flags float blended at her fore,
Gay convoyed by a fleet,
Whose answering guns repeat
The joyous 'God speeds' thundered from the shore.
'Look, comrades! there she goes,
Old Denmark's Royal Rose,
Plucked but to wither on a foreign strand;
Can Copenhagen's dames
Forget their country's shames—
Her sons, unblushing, clasp a British hand?
'Since that dark day of shame
Which blends with Nelson's fame,
When the prince of all the land led us on,
I little thought to see
Our noblest bend the knee
To any English queen, or her son.