That were leeched with clamorous skill, (Surgery savage and hard,) Splinted with bolt and beam, Probed in scarfing and seam, With oakum and boiling pitch, Our lofty spars were down, Sixty flags and three, As we floated up the bay— At every peak and mast-head flew With hawsers strong and taut, Forging boldly ahead, On her lofty mizzen flew That had waved o'er twenty fights So we went with the first of the tide, Of the rebel guns ashore And the thunder of each full broadside. Ah, how poor the prate Of statute and state We once held these fellows! Here on the flood's pale-green, Each bluff old Sea-Lawyer ! Talk to them, Dahlgren, Parrott, and Sawyer! On, in the whirling shade Three hundred traps of hell! And there, O sight forlorn! Hurtled and thundered, (Ah, what ill raven Flapped o'er the ship that morn !)— Caught by the under-death, In the drawing of a breath Down went dauntless Craven, He and his hundred ! A moment we saw her turret, A little heel she gave, And a thin white spray went o'er her, The channel for their grave, Then in that deadly track A little the ships held back, Closing up in their stations ; There are minutes that fix the fate (Christening the generations,) When valor were all too late, If a moment's doubt be harbored ; From the main-top, bold and brief, Ahead lay the Tennessee, On our starboard bow he lay, (The rest had run up the bay); There he was, belching flame from his bow, And the steam from his throat's abyss Was a Dragon's maddened hiss; In sooth a most cursed craft!— In a sullen ring, at bay, By the Middle-Ground they lay, Trust me, our berth was hot, Ah, wickedly well they shot How their death-bolts howled and stung! Till the air around us rung; So the battle raged and roared ; Ah, had you been aboard To have seen the fight we made! How they leapt, the tongues of flame, How the broadsides, deck and frame, And how the enemy's shell Still, as the fray grew louder, And if tackle or truck found hurt, Never a nerve that failed, Never a cheek that paled, Not a tinge of gloom or pallor ;- |