Where is Ap Catesby?  The fights fought of
    yore
Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and
    more. 
But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross,
And the waters wallow all, and laugh
    Where’s the loss?
But John Bull’s bullet in his shoulder bearing
Ballasted Ap in his long sea-faring. 
The middies they ducked to the man who had
    messed
With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward
    pressed
Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the
    rest.

Humped veteran o’ the Heart-o’-Oak war,
Moored long in haven where the old heroes are,
Never on you did the iron-clads jar! 
Your open deck when the boarder assailed,
The frank old heroic hand-to-hand then availed.

But where’s Guert Gan?  Still heads he the van? 
As before Vera-Cruz, when he dashed splashing
    through
The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-and-
    blue,
And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand,
Aloft waved his sword on the hostile land! 
Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering;
All hands vying—­all colors flying: 
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” and “Row, boys, row!”
“Hey, Starry Banner!” “Hi, Santa Anna!”
Old Scott’s young dash at Mexico.

Fine forces o’ the land, fine forces o’ the sea,
Fleet, army, and flotilla—­tell, heart o’ me,
Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be!

But ah, how to speak of the hurricane
    unchained—­
The Union’s strands parted in the hawser
    over-strained;
Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone
    altogether—­
The dashed fleet o’ States in Secession’s foul
    weather.

Lost in the smother o’ that wide public stress,
In hearts, private hearts, what ties there were
    snapped! 
Tell, Hal—­vouch, Will, o’ the ward-room mess,
On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. 
With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass,
And a grip o’ the flipper, it was part and pass: 
“Hal, must it be:  Well, if come indeed the
    shock,
To North or to South, let the victory cleave,
Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock,
But Uncle Sam’s eagle never crow will,
    believe.”

Sentiment:  ay, while suspended hung all,
Ere the guns against Sumter opened there
    the ball,
And partners were taken, and the red dance
    began,
War’s red dance o’ death!—­Well, we, to a man,
We sailors o’ the North, wife, how could we
    lag?—­
Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag! 
But to sailors o’ the South that easy way was
    barred. 
To some, dame, believe (and I speak o’ what I
    know),
Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite’s black
    shard;
And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the
    throe. 
Duty?  It pulled with more than one string,
This way and that, and anyhow a sting. 
The flag and your kin, how be true unto both? 
If either plight ye keep, then ye break the other
    troth. 
But elect here they must, though the casuists
    were out;
Decide—­hurry up—­and throttle every doubt.