WHAT distant thunders rend the skies, | |
| What clouds of smoke in volumes rise, | |
| What means this dreadful roar! | |
| Is from his base Vesuvius thrown, | |
| Is sky-topt Atlas tumbled down, | 5 |
| Or Etna’s self no more! | |
| |
| Shock after shock torments my ear; | |
| And lo! two hostile ships appear, | |
| Red lightnings round them glow: | |
| The Yarmouth boasts of sixty-four, | 10 |
| The Randolph thirty-two—no more— | |
| And will she fight this foe! | |
| |
| The Randolph soon on Stygian streams | |
| Shall coast along the land of dreams, | |
| The islands of the dead! | 15 |
| But fate, that parts them on the deep, | |
| Shall save the Briton, still to weep | |
| His ancient honors fled. | |
| |
| Say, who commands that dismal blaze, | |
| Where yonder starry streamer plays; | 20 |
| Does Mars with Jove engage! | |
| ’Tis Biddle wings those angry fires, | |
| Biddle, whose bosom Jove inspires | |
| With more than mortal rage. | |
| |
| Tremendous flash! and hark, the ball | 25 |
| Drives through old Yarmouth, flames and all; | |
| Her bravest sons expire; | |
| Did Mars himself approach so nigh, | |
| Even Mars, without disgrace, might fly | |
| The Randolph’s fiercer fire. | 30 |
| |
| The Briton views his mangled crew, | |
| “And shall we strike to thirty-two,” | |
| (Said Hector, stained with gore;) | |
| “Shall Britain’s flag to these descend— | |
| Rise, and the glorious conflict end, | 35 |
| Britons, I ask no more!” | |
| |
| He spoke—they charged their cannon round, | |
| Again the vaulted heavens resound, | |
| The Randolph bore it all, | |
| Then fixed her pointed cannons true— | 40 |
| Away the unwieldly vengeance flew; | |
| Britain, the warriors fall. | |
| |
| The Yarmouth saw, with dire dismay, | |
| Her wounded hull, shrouds shot away, | |
| Her boldest heroes dead— | 45 |
| She saw amidst her floating slain | |
| The conquering Randolph stem the main— | |
| She saw, she turned, and fled! | |
| |
| That hour, blest chief, had she been thine, | |
| Dear Biddle, had the powers divine | 50 |
| Been kind as thou wert brave; | |
| But fate, who doomed thee to expire, | |
| Prepared an arrow tipped with fire, | |
| And marked a watery grave, | |
| |
| And in that hour when conquest came | 55 |
| Winged at his ship a pointed flame | |
| That not even he could shun— | |
| The conquest ceased, the Yarmouth fled, | |
| The bursting Randolph ruin spread, | |
| And lost what honor won. | 60 |
| |
