ON BOARD THE ’76.

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT’S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.

NOVEMBER 3, 1864.

[After the disastrous battle of Bull Run, Congress authorized the creation of an army of 500,000, and the expenditure of $500,000,000.  The affair of the Trent had partially indicated the temper of the English government, and the people of the United States were thoroughly roused to a sense of the great task which lay before them.  Mr. Bryant, at this time, not only gave strong support to the Union through his paper The Evening Post of New York, but wrote two lyrics which had a profound effect.  One of these, entitled Not Yet, was addressed to those of the Old World who were secretly or openly desiring the downfall of the republic.  The other, Our Country’s Call, was a thrilling appeal for recruits.  It is to this time and these two poems that Mr. Lowell refers in the lines that follow.]

    Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea,
      Her rudder gone, her mainmast o’er the side;
    Her scuppers, from the waves’ clutch staggering free,
      Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide;
    Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, 5
        We lay, awaiting morn.

    Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair;
      And she that bare the promise of the world
    Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare,
      At random o’er the wildering waters hurled; 10
    The reek of battle drifting slow alee
        Not sullener than we.

    Morn came at last to peer into our woe,
      When lo, a sail!  Now surely help was nigh;
    The red cross flames aloft, Christ’s pledge; but no,[10] 15
      Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by
    And hails us:—­“Gains the leak!  Ay, so we thought! 
        Sink, then, with curses fraught!”

    I leaned against my gun still angry-hot,
      And my lids tingled with the tears held back; 20
    This scorn methought was crueller than shot: 
      The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack,
    Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far
        Than such fear-smothered war.

    There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute 25
      The fiercer for his hurt.  What now were best? 
    Once more tug bravely at the peril’s root,
      Though death came with it?  Or evade the test
    If right or wrong in this God’s world of ours
        Be leagued with higher powers? 30

    Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag
      With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs;
    Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag
      That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs
    Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 35
        ’Neath the all-seeing sun.