Should ever catch the poet.
| [15] | A cant appellation given amongst the soldiery to the corps that had the honor to guard his Majesty’s person. |
| [16] | Five refugees (’tis true) were found stiff on the block-house floor, But then, ’tis thought, the shot went round, and in at the back door. |
From a large collection of naval ballads, we select the following, as one of the most curious of its class, and because, like several others in this collection, it has never before been printed. It was written by the surgeon of the “Fair American,” and was familiar to the Massachusetts privateersmen during the last years of the Revolution. The “noble captain,” we believe, was an ancestor of the inimitable author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem.
BOLD HAWTHORNE.
The twenty-second of August, before the close of day,
All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh;
We kept the Eastern Shore along, for forty leagues or more,