Seasons have passed since that day and year- Hushed is the roll of the Rebel drum, The sabres are sheathed, and the cannon are dumb; But the fame of the Wilderness fight abides; Calm and unmoved as in battle he sat, The gray-bearded man in the black slouched hat. JOHN R. THOMPSON. RUNNING THE BLOCKADE. A CHASE IN SOUNDINGS. HOVE in the stays, she lay, The good ship Heir of Lynn: The very focus of light; Where the sea grows hot and white, Or solid rock, with a fault That clipped the horizon's edge In a long irregular ledge. In the summer of sixty-three, As still as they could be Over its shadow, under Not a cat's-paw turned the streamer, You could see the smoke of a steamer You could hear the sullen coughing, At Wilmington harbor and bay,— Uneasily looked the master Now at the sea, and then Off in a dream again Of home, as the bo's'n cast her Like the small blue flowers that live but a day, The skies got bluer and bluer, Till the far-off gunboat knew her, 1 Deep sea. And came up, hand over hand, Of the coils of her screw propeller, Like the rifles that twist out her shell, or The leverage fold and grapple Of the sinewy boa-constrictor, While her stem peeled the scum as an apple, And the plunge of her steam beat the drums of a victor. But, like omens in viscera, Old Romans sought for; As the stars fought with Sisera, Faster and faster, And over and past her, Swirled the cone of the cyclone and fought her. It touched the sails of the schooner As swivels of hail Beat tattoo on the sail, And he looked on the sea, "You'll want boots to follow me Ship ahoy! Heave to! The wind seemed to wrestle To shrink from the danger But grimly defiant, And louder and louder, In the bursting of powder, Spoke the lips of her cannon. * "It's Joe, to be sure," Said the naval commander, "And he's got a king's ransom of stores in his keel; I'll sink her, or land her Rawbones on a lee shore, To feed the Sound fishes on his powder and steel.” A reef rose between, Where the keel of the sea seemed to jib and careen, And pitch on its beam ends, About which the water ran smooth with vehemence, Like the gates of a lock when its hinges are swung. And the bore of the current shoots out in a tongue, But, taut and close-lasted, From keelson to masthead; Spanker vangs to spritsail-yards, And flying jib-boom, As true to her halyards As belle of the room When her feet, to the click of the castanets clipping, Make rhymes to the music's adagios tripping,- And pitch-piped its bagpipes as shrill as a demon, Double banked her propeller; And rushed at the sluice with a full head of steam on. * But the fugitive ship, The nips of the channel, In shoulder and knee, * * Seemed to rise and bend over her; The bellowing sea, To open and cover her; And where the surf plunges Through coral and sponges In slings of the wind as light as a feather, * To rove the blue phosphorous frost in her shrouds, The burst of the clouds Mixed the sea and the sand and the sky altogether, And the welkin cracked open with terrible brightening, Till the bed of the sea seemed to bristle with lightning; And over, and under The clamor of waves, pealed the toll of the thunder. * * * |