Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. Herman Melville

the gale of outer ocean—

      Cribbed in a craft which like a log

      Was washed by every billow's motion—

      By night you heard of Og

      The huge; nor felt your courage clog

      At tokens of his onset grim:

      You marked the sunk ship's flag-staff slim,

      Lit by her burning sister's heart;

      You marked, and mused: "Day brings the trial:

      Then be it proved if I have part

      With men whose manhood never took denial."

      A prayer went up—a champion's. Morning

      Beheld you in the Turret walled

      by adamant, where a spirit forewarning

      And all-deriding called:

      "Man, darest thou—desperate, unappalled—

      Be first to lock thee in the armored tower?

      I have thee now; and what the battle-hour

      To me shall bring—heed well—thou'lt share;

      This plot-work, planned to be the foeman's terror,

      To thee may prove a goblin-snare;

      Its very strength and cunning—monstrous error!"

      "Stand up, my heart; be strong; what matter

      If here thou seest thy welded tomb?

      And let huge Og with thunders batter—

      Duty be still my doom,

      Though drowning come in liquid gloom;

      First duty, duty next, and duty last;

      Ay, Turret, rivet me here to duty fast!—"

      So nerved, you fought wisely and well;

      And live, twice live in life and story;

      But over your Monitor dirges swell,

      In wind and wave that keep the rites of glory.

The Temeraire.^[3]

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      (Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order by the fight of the Monitor and Merrimac.)

      [3] The Temeraire, that storied ship of the old English fleet, and the subject of the well-known painting by Turner, commends itself to the mind seeking for some one craft to stand for the poetic ideal of those great historic wooden warships, whose gradual displacement is lamented by none more than by regularly educated navy officers, and of all nations.

      The gloomy hulls, in armor grim,

      Like clouds o'er moors have met,

      And prove that oak, and iron, and man

      Are tough in fibre yet.

      But Splendors wane. The sea-fight yields

      No front of old display;

      The garniture, emblazonment,

      And heraldry all decay.

      Towering afar in parting light,

      The fleets like Albion's forelands shine—

      The full-sailed fleets, the shrouded show

      Of Ships-of-the-Line.

      The fighting Temeraire,

      Built of a thousand trees,

      Lunging out her lightnings,

      And beetling o'er the seas—

      O Ship, how brave and fair,

      That fought so oft and well,