Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.

March 19

Battle-Song of the Oregon

By Wallace Rice (1859–1939)

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—

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,

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

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.

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

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,

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,

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….

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

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,

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

At each incessant gun.

I come, the warship Oregon,

My wake a whitening world,

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

The race that rules the wave!