William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Ode on Our Naval VictoriesA
The trident of the subject sea,
And all that time no eye beheld
Her flag strike to an enemy.
Van Tromp no longer swept the sea;
And the proud crest of haughty Spain
Bow’d to her great supremacy.
And made the crescent wax more pale;
While Mussulmen before her bow’d;
Who scorn’d the Christian’s God to hail.
By every sea and every shore,
Her mandates at the cannon’s mouth
Her wooden walls in triumph bore.
Where’er a merchant vessel sail’d,
Her red-cross flag in triumph rode,
Her red artillery prevail’d.
Amid the verdant southern isles,
Where’er the frigid waters freeze,
Where’er the placid ocean smiles,
Afar and near, triumphantly,
And Britons claim’d the proudest name—
The sovereigns of the trackless sea.
A nation little known in story,
That dared that empire to contest,
And cross her in the path of glory;
Of England’s lion stern and brave;
But venturous launch’d her little fleet,
Her honour and her rights to save.
The New World ’gainst the stubborn Old!
A dread encounter!—rock to rock;
The Yankee, and the Briton bold.
No eye that lives e’er saw before:
The Briton’s sun went down in night—
The Yankee’s rose to set no more!
For ages, at the mast-head flew,
And the old world’s puissance curb’d,
Struck to the prowess of the new.
The dastard world for ages past,
Our stars and stripes in triumph waved
High on the proud top-gallant mast.
While sparkle Heaven’s eternal fires,
Emblems of that resistless might
Which daring Liberty inspires.