Of all these thrills thrilled at keelson, and
    throes,
Little felt the shoddyites a-toasting o’ their
    toes;
In mart and bazar Lucre chuckled the huzza,
Coining the dollars in the bloody mint of war.

But in men, gray knights o’ the Order o’ Scars,
And brave boys bound by vows unto Mars,
Nature grappled honor, intertwisting in the
    strife:—­
But some cut the knot with a thoroughgoing
    knife. 
For how when the drums beat?  How in the fray
In Hampton Roads on the fine balmy day?

There a lull, wife, befell—­drop o’ silent in the
    din. 
Let us enter that silence ere the belchings
    re-begin. 
Through a ragged rift aslant in the cannonade’s
    smoke
An iron-clad reveals her repellent broadside
Bodily intact.  But a frigate, all oak,
Shows honeycombed by shot, and her deck
    crimson-dyed. 
And a trumpet from port of the iron-clad hails,
Summoning the other, whose flag never trails: 
“Surrender that frigate, Will!  Surrender,
Or I will sink her—­ram, and end her!”

’T was Hal.  And Will, from the naked heart-o’-oak,
Will, the old messmate, minus trumpet, spoke,
Informally intrepid,—­“Sink her, and be
    damned!"* [* Historic.]
Enough.  Gathering way, the iron-clad rammed. 
The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a
    dusk. 
Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell
The fixed metal struck—­uinvoked struck the
    knell
Of the Cumberland stillettoed by the
    Merrimac’s tusk;
While, broken in the wound underneath the
    gun-deck,
Like a sword-fish’s blade in leviathan waylaid,
The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering
    wreck. 
There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded
    go down,
And the chaplain with them.  But the surges
    uplift
The prone dead from deck, and for moment
    they drift
Washed with the swimmers, and the spent
    swimmers drown. 
Nine fathom did she sink,—­erect, though hid
    from light
Save her colors unsurrendered and spars that
    kept the height.

Nay, pardon, old aunty!  Wife, never let it fall,
That big started tear that hovers on the brim;
I forgot about your nephew and the Merrimac’s
    ball;
No more then of her, since it summons up him. 
But talk o’ fellows’ hearts in the wine’s genial
    cup:—­
Trap them in the fate, jam them in the strait,
Guns speak their hearts then, and speak
    right up. 
The troublous colic o’ intestine war
It sets the bowels o’ affection ajar. 
But, lord, old dame, so spins the whizzing world,
A humming-top, ay, for the little boy-gods
Flogging it well with their smart little rods,
Tittering at time and the coil uncurled.

Now, now, sweetheart, you sidle away,
No, never you like that kind o’ gay;
But sour if I get, giving truth her due,
Honey-sweet forever, wife, will Dick be to you!