Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.

The Death of Capt. N. Biddle

WHAT distant thunders rend the skies?

What clouds of smoke in columns rise,

What means this dreadful roar?

Is from his base Vesuvius thrown,

Is sky-topp’d Atlas tumbled down,

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,

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:

But Fate, that parts them on the deep,

May save the Briton, yet, to weep

His days of victory fled.

Say, who commands that dismal blaze,

Where yonder starry streamer plays?

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

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.

The Briton views his mangled crew—

“And shall we strike to ‘thirty-two?’”

Said Hector, stain’d with gore:

“Shall Britain’s flag to these descend?

Rise, and the glorious conflict end:

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:

Away the unwieldy vengeance flew—

Britain, thy warriors fall.

The Yarmouth saw, with dire dismay,

Her wounded hull—shrouds shot away—

Her boldest heroes dead:

She saw, amidst her floating slain,

The conquering Randolph stem the main—

She saw, she turn’d, and fled!

That hour, bless’d chief, had she been thine,

Dear Biddle, had the powers divine

Been kind as thou wert brave:

But Fate, who doom’d thee to expire,

Prepared an arrow, tipp’d with fire,

And mark’d a watery grave;

And in that hour, when conquest came,

Wing’d at his ship a pointed flame,

That not even he could shun.

The battle ceased, the Yarmouth fled,

The bursting Randolph ruin spread,

And left her task undone!