Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Attack
By Thomas Buchanan Read (18221872)I
Peace on the deck, and in the fortress sleeping,
Till, in the lookout of the Cumberland,
The sailor, with his well-poised glass in hand,
Descried the iron island downward creeping.
And Tumult, with her train, was there to follow;
For still the stranger kept its seaward way,
Looking a great leviathan blowing spray,
Seeking with steady course his ocean wallow.
A floating monster, ugly and gigantic;
In shape, a wave, with long and shelving height,
As if a mighty billow, heaved at night,
Should turn to iron in the mid-Atlantic.
Until the Cumberland’s cannon, silence breaking,
Thundered its guardian challenge, “Who comes there?”
But, like a rock-flung echo in the air,
The shot rebounded, no impression making.
On, like a nightmare, moved the shape defiant;
The tempest of our pounding shot and shell,
Crumbled to harmless nothing, thickly fell
From off the sounding armor of the giant!
With beak directed at the vessel’s centre;
Then through the constant cloud of sulphurous smoke
Drove, till it struck the warrior’s wall of oak,
Making a gateway for the waves to enter.
And then, with all a murderer’s impatience,
Rushed on again, crushing her ribs anew,
Cleaving the noble hull wellnigh in two,
And on it sped its fiery imprecations.
With splash, and rush, and guilty rise appalling;
While sinking cannon rung their own loud knell.
Then cried the traitor, from his sulphurous cell,
“Do you surrender?” Oh, those words were galling!
It was a shout from out a soul of splendor,
Echoed from lofty maintop, and again
Between-decks, from the lips of dying men,
“Sink! sink, boys, sink! but never say surrender!”
Her sacred flag to insolent dictator.
Weep for the patriot heroes, doomed to drown;
Pledge to the sunken Cumberland’s renown.
She sank, thank God! unsoiled by foot of traitor!