To count, recognise, circumvent their foes,
Each hauls his wind, the weathergage to gain
And master all the movements of the plain;
Or bears before the breeze with loftier gait,
And, beam to beam, begins the work of fate.
As when the warring winds, from each far pole,
Their adverse storms across the concave roll,
Thin fleecy vapors through the expansion run,
Veil the blue vault and tremble o’er the sun,
Till the dark folding wings together drive
And, ridged with fire and rockt with thunder, strive;
So, hazing through the void, at first appear
White clouds of canvass floating on the air,
Then frown the broad black decks, the sails are stay’d,
The gaping portholes cast a frightful shade,
Flames triple tier’d and tides of smoke arise,
And fulminations rock the seas and skies.
From van to rear the roaring deluge runs,
The storm disgorging from a thousand guns,
Each like a vast volcano, spouting wide
His hissing hell-dogs o’er the shuddering tide,
Whirls high his chainshot, cleaves the mast and strows
The shiver’d fragments on the staggering foes;
Whose gunwale sides with iron globes are gored,
And a wild storm of splinters sweeps the board.
Husht are the winds of heaven; no more the gale
Breaks the red rolls of smoke nor flaps the sail;
A dark dead calm continuous cloaks the glare
And holds the clouds of sulphur on the war,
Convolving o’er the space that yawns and shines
With frequent flash between the laboring lines.
Nor sun nor sea nor skyborn lightning gleams,
But flaming Phlegethon’s asphaltic steams
Streak the long gaping gulf; where varying glow
Carbonic curls above, blue flakes of fire below.
Hither two hostile ships to contact run,
Both grappling, board to board and gun to gun;
Each through the adverse ports their contents pour,
Rake the lower decks, the interior timbers bore,
Drive into chinks the illumined wads unseen,
Whose flames approach the unguarded magazine.
Above, with shrouds afoul and gunwales mann’d,
Thick halberds clash; and, closing hand to hand,
The huddling troops infuriate from despair
Tug at the toils of death, and perish there;
Grenados, carcasses their fragments spread,
And pikes and pistols strow the decks with dead.
Now on the Gallic board the Britons rush,
The intrepid Gauls the rash adventurers crush;
And now, to vengeance stung, with frantic air,
Back on the British maindeck roll the war.
There swells the carnage; all the tar-beat floor
Is clogg’d with spatter’d brains and glued with gore;
And down the ship’s black waist, fresh brooks of blood
Course o’er their clots and tinge the sable flood.
Till War, impatient of the lingering strife
That tires and slackens with the waste of life,
Opes with engulfing gape the astonisht wave,
And whelms the combat whole, in one vast grave.
For now the chamber’d powder caught the flames
And into atoms whirl’d the monstrous frames
Of both the entangled ships; the vortex wide
Roars like an Etna through the belching tide;
And blazing into heaven and bursting high,
Shells, carriages and guns obstruct the sky;
Cords, timbers, trunks of men the welkin sweep
And fall on distant ships or shower along the deep.
The matcht armadas still the fight maintain,
But cautious, distant; lest the staggering main
Drive their whole lines afoul, and one dark day
Glut the proud ocean with too rich a prey.
At last, where scattering fires the cloud disclose,
Hulls heave in sight and blood the decks o’erflows;
Here from the field tost navies rise to view,
Drive back to vengeance and the roar renew,
There shatter’d ships commence their flight afar,
Tow’d through the smoke, hard struggling from the war;
And some, half seen amid the gaping wave,
Plunge in the whirl they make and gorge their grave.
Soon the dark smoky volumes roll’d away,
And a long line ascended into day;
The pinions swell’d, Britannia’s cross arose
And flew the terrors of triumphing foes;
When to Virginia’s bay, new shocks to brave,
The Gallic powers their conquering banners wave.
Glad Chesapeake unfolds his bosom wide
And leads their prows to York’s contracting tide;
Where still dread Washington directs his way,
And seas and continents his voice obey;
While brave Cornwallis, mid the gathering host,
Perceives his glories gone, his promised empire lost.
Columbus here with silent joy beheld
His favorite sons the fates of nations wield.
Here joyous Lincoln rose in arms again,
Nelson and Knox moved ardent o’er the plain;
Scammel alert with force unusual trod,
Prepared to seal their victory with his blood;
Cobb, Dearborn, Laurens, Tilghman, green in years
But ripe in glory, tower’d amid their peers;
Death daring Hamilton with splendor shone
And claim’d each post of danger for his own,
Skill’d every arm in war’s whole hell to wield,
An Ithacus in camp, an Ajax in the field.
Their Gallic friends an equal ardor fires;
Brisk emulation every troop inspires:
Where Tarleton turns, with hopes of flight elate,
Brave Biron moves and drives him back to fate,
Hems in his host, to wait, on Gloster plains
Their finish’d labors and their destined chains.
Two British forts the growing siege outflank,
Rake its wide works and awe the tide-beat bank;
Swift from the lines two chosen bands advance,
Our light arm’d scouts, the grenadiers of France;
These young Viominil conducts to fame,
And those Fayette’s unerring guidance claim.
No cramm’d cartouch their belted back attires,
No grains of sleeping thunder wait their fires;
The flint, the ramrod spurn’d away they cast;
The strong bright bayonet, imbeaded fast,
Stands beaming from the bore; with this they tread,
Nor heed from high-wall’d foes their showers of lead.
Each rival band, though wide and distant far,
Springs simultaneous to this task of war;
For here a twofold force each hero draws,
His own proud country and the general cause;
And each with twofold energy contends,
His foes to vanquish and outstrip his friends.
They summon all their zeal and wild and warm
O’er flaming ramparts pour the maddening storm,
The mounted cannons crush and lead the foe
Two trains of captives to the plain below;
An equal prize each gallant troop ameeds,
Alike their numbers and alike their deeds.
A strong high citadel still thundering stood
And stream’d her standard o’er the field of blood,
Checkt long the siege with fulminating blare,
Scorn’d all the steel and every globe of war,
Defied fell famine, heapt her growing store
And housed in bombproof all the host she bore.
No rude assault can stretch the scale so high,
In vain the battering siege-guns round her ply;
Mortars well poised their deafening deluge rain,
Load the red skies and shake the shores in vain;
Her huge rock battlements rebound the blow
And roll their loose crags on the men below.
But while the fusing fireballs scorch the sky,
Their
