| |
| THE BILLOWY headlands swiftly fly | |
| The crested path I keep, | |
| My ribboned smoke stains many a sky, | |
| My embers dye the deep; | |
| A continent has hardly space— | 5 |
| Mid-ocean little more, | |
| Wherein to trace my eager race | |
| While clang the alarums of war. | |
| |
| I come, the warship Oregon, | |
| My wake a whitening world, | 10 |
| My cannon shotted, thundering on | |
| With battle-flags unfurled. | |
| My land knows no successful foe— | |
| Behold, to sink or save, | |
| From stoker’s flame to gunner’s aim | 15 |
| The race that rules the wave! | |
| |
| A nation’s prayers my bulwark are | |
| Though ne’er so wild the sea; | |
| Flow time or tide, come storm or star, | |
| Throbs my machinery. | 20 |
| Lands Spain has lost forever peer | |
| From every lengthening coast, | |
| Till rings the cheer that proves me near | |
| The flag of Columbia’s host. | |
| |
| Defiantly I have held my way | 25 |
| From the vigorous shore where Drake | |
| Dreamed a New Albion in the day | |
| He left New Spain a-quake; | |
| His shining course retraced, I fight | |
| The self-same foe he fought, | 30 |
| All earth to light with signs of might | |
| Which God our Captain wrought. | |
| |
| Made mad, from Santiago’s mouth | |
| Spain’s ships-of-battle dart: | |
| My bulk comes broadening from the south, | 35 |
| A hurricane at heart; | |
| Its desperate armories blaze and boom, | |
| Its ardent engines beat; | |
| And fiery doom finds root and bloom | |
| Aboard of the Spanish fleet…. | 40 |
| |
| The hundredweight of the Golden Hind | |
| With me are ponderous tons, | |
| The ordnance great her deck that lined | |
| Would feed my ravening guns, | |
| Her spacious reach in months and years | 45 |
| I’ve shrunk to nights and days; | |
| Yet in my ears are ringing cheers | |
| Sir Frank himself would raise; | |
| |
| For conquereth not mine engines’ breath | |
| Nor sides steel-clad and strong, | 50 |
| Nor bulk, nor rifles red with death: | |
| To Spain, too, these belong; | |
| What made that old Armada break | |
| This newer victory won: | |
| Jehovah spake by the sons of Drake | 55 |
| At each incessant gun. | |
| |
| I come, the warship Oregon, | |
| My wake a whitening world, | |
| My cannon shotted, thundering on | |
| With battle-flags unfurled. | 60 |
| My land knows no successful foe— | |
| Behold, to sink or save, | |
| From stoker’s flame to gunner’s aim | |
| The race that rules the wave! | |
| |
