BRIDEGROOM DICK
1876
Sunning ourselves in October on a day
Balmy as spring, though the year was in decay,
I lading my pipe, she stirring her tea,
My old woman she says to me,
"Feel ye, old man, how the season mellows?"
And why should I not, blessed heart alive,
Here mellowing myself, past sixty-five,
To think o' the May-time o' pennoned young
fellows
This stripped old hulk here for years may
survive.
Ere yet, long ago, we were spliced, Bonny Blue,
(Silvery it gleams down the moon-glade o' time,
Ah, sugar in the bowl and berries in the prime!)
Coxswain I o' the Commodore's crew—
Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig,
Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig.
Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me,
Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me.
Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o' Linkum in a song,
Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed,
Favored I was, wife, and fleeted right along; And though but a tot for such a tall grade, A high quartermaster at last I was made. All this, old lassie, you have heard before, But you listen again for the sake e'en o' me; No babble stales o' the good times o' yore To Joan, if Darby the babbler be. Babbler?—O' what? Addled brains, they forget! O—quartermaster I; yes, the signals set, Hoisted the ensign, mended it when frayed, Polished up the binnacle, minded the helm, And prompt every order blithely obeyed. To me would the officers say a word cheery— Break through the starch o' the quarter-deck realm; His coxswain late, so the Commodore's pet. Ay, and in night-watches long and weary, Bored nigh to death with the navy etiquette, Yearning, too, for fun, some younker, a cadet, Dropping for time each vain bumptious trick, Boy-like would unbend to Bridegroom Dick. But a limit there was—a check, d' ye see: Those fine young aristocrats knew their degree. Well, stationed aft where their lordships keep— Seldom going forward excepting to sleep— I, boozing now on by-gone years, My betters recall along with my peers. Recall them? Wife, but I see them plain: Alive, alert, every man stirs again. Ay, and again on the lee-side pacing, My spy-glass carrying, a truncheon in show, Turning at the taffrail, my footsteps retracing, Proud in my duty, again methinks I go. And Dave, Dainty Dave, I mark where he stands, Our trim sailing-master, to time the high-noon, That thingumbob sextant perplexing eyes and hands, Squinting at the sun, or twigging o' the moon; Then, touching his cap to Old Chock-a-Block Commanding the quarter-deck—"Sir, twelve o'clock." Where sails he now, that trim sailing-master, Slender, yes, as the ship's sky-s'l pole? Dimly I mind me of some sad disaster— Dainty Dave was dropped from the navy-roll! And ah, for old Lieutenant Chock-a-Block— Fast, wife, chock-fast to death's black dock! Buffeted about the obstreperous ocean, Fleeted his life, if lagged his promotion. Little girl, they are all, all gone, I think, Leaving Bridegroom Dick here with lids that wink. Where is Ap Catesby? The fights fought of yore Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and more. But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross, And the waters wallow all, and laugh Where's the loss? But John Bull's bullet in his shoulder bearing Ballasted Ap in his long sea-faring. The middies they ducked to the man who had messed With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward pressed Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the rest. Humped veteran o' the Heart-o'-Oak war, Moored long in haven where the old heroes are, Never on you did the iron-clads jar! Your open deck when the boarder assailed, The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed. But where's Guert Gan? Still heads he the van? As before Vera-Cruz, when he dashed splashing through The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-and- blue, And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand, Aloft waved his sword on the hostile land! Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering; All hands vying—all colors flying: "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and "Row, boys, row!" "Hey, Starry Banner!" "Hi, Santa Anna!" Old Scott's young dash at Mexico. Fine forces o' the land, fine forces o' the sea, Fleet, army, and flotilla—tell, heart o' me, Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be! But ah, how to speak of the hurricane unchained— The Union's strands parted in the hawser over-strained; Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether— The dashed fleet o' States in Secession's foul weather. Lost in the smother o' that wide public stress, In hearts, private hearts, what ties there were snapped! Tell, Hal—vouch, Will, o' the ward-room mess, On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass, And a grip o' the flipper, it was part and pass: "Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the shock, To North or to South, let the victory cleave, Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock, But Uncle Sam's eagle never crow will, believe." Sentiment: ay, while suspended hung all, Ere the guns against Sumter opened there the ball, And partners were taken, and the red dance began, War's red dance o' death!—Well, we, to a man, We sailors o' the North, wife, how could we lag?— Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag! But to sailors o' the South that easy way was barred. To some, dame, believe (and I speak o' what I know), Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite's black shard; And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the throe. Duty? It pulled with more than one string, This way and that, and anyhow a sting. The flag and your kin, how be true unto both? If either plight ye keep, then ye break the other troth. But elect here they must, though the casuists were out; Decide—hurry up—and throttle every doubt. Of all these thrills thrilled at keelson, and throes, Little felt the shoddyites a-toasting o' their toes; In mart and bazar Lucre chuckled the huzza, Coining the dollars in the bloody mint of war. But in men, gray knights o' the Order o' Scars, And brave boys bound by vows unto Mars, Nature grappled honor, intertwisting in the strife:— But some cut the knot with a thoroughgoing knife. For how when the drums beat? How in the fray In Hampton Roads on the fine balmy day? There a lull, wife, befell—drop o' silent in the din. Let us enter that silence ere the belchings re-begin. Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade's smoke An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside Bodily intact. But a frigate, all oak, Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck crimson-dyed. And a trumpet from port of the iron-clad hails, Summoning the other, whose flag never trails: "Surrender that frigate, Will! Surrender, Or I will sink her—ram, and end her!" 'T was Hal. And Will, from the naked heart-o'-oak, Will, the old messmate, minus trumpet, spoke, Informally intrepid—"Sink her, and be damned!"* [* Historic.] Enough. Gathering way, the iron-clad rammed. The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a dusk. Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell The fixed metal struck—uinvoked struck the knell Of the Cumberland stillettoed by the Merrimac's tusk; While, broken in the wound underneath the gun-deck, Like a sword-fish's blade in leviathan waylaid, The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering wreck. There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded go down, And the chaplain with them. But the surges uplift The prone dead from deck, and for moment they drift Washed with the swimmers, and the spent swimmers drown. Nine fathom did she sink—erect, though hid from light Save her colors unsurrendered and spars that kept the height. Nay, pardon, old aunty! Wife, never let it fall, That big started tear that hovers on the brim; I forgot about your nephew and the Merrimac's ball; No more then of her, since it summons up him. But talk o' fellows' hearts in the wine's genial cup:— Trap them in the fate, jam them in the strait, Guns speak their hearts then, and speak right up. The troublous colic o' intestine war It sets the bowels o' affection ajar. But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world, A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods Flogging it well with their smart little rods,