James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
July 2The Brooklyn at Santiago
By Wallace Rice (18591939)’T
Ships staunch and brave,
Majestic, forth they flash and boom
Upon the wave.
Far out to sea,
And speeds Cervera to his fate
With canonry.
His flame-wreathed side:
She sets her banners on the skies
In fearful pride.
Fierce for the fray,
She darts, an eagle from his eyre,
Upon her prey.
Sigh, sigh for Spain!—
And beats her clanging armor bare
With glittering rain.
Into the throng
Where loud the bannered Brooklyn chants
Her awful song.
Our Commodore;
His broadsides roll, the foemen swerve
Toward the shore.
And, girdling there
This side and that with glory, burns
Spain to despair.
Her missiles hiss:
The Spaniard sees, when all too late,
A Nemesis.
Then, torn and lame,
Her portholes turn to yawning wells,
Geysers of flame.
Our rifles’ dread:
The doomed Teresa shudders—lies
Stark with her dead.
Eulate knows,
As the Vizcaya staggers, shrieks
Her horrent woes.
Shall Biscay feel
Her heart throb for the ship that wore
Her name in steel.
As gloomed her knell;
She trembles, bursts—the ship is gone
Headlong to hell.
Spain’s hope, Spain’s fear!—
Sees, and it lends her wings of fright,
Schley’s pennant near.
God, how she runs!—
And ever hears behind her moan
The Brooklyn’s guns.
Roar and draw nigh;
Spain’s ensign stained with gold and blood,
Falls from on high.
Gone, with her power—
Dead, ’neath the Brooklyn’s thunderblast,
In one great hour.
And gallant Schley!
Proud is the flag his sailors flew
Along the sky.
Our Union wears,
The fighting Brooklyn shows a scar—
So much he dares.
But, if it slip,
Send such a chief, with men like these,
On such a ship!