Classic Poem

They say the Spanish ships are out
To seize the Spanish Main;
Reach down the volume, Boy, and read
The story o'er again:

How when the Spaniard had the might,
He drenched the Earth, like rain,
With Saxon blood and made it Death
To sail the Spanish Main.

With torch and steel; with stake and rack
He trampled out God's Truce
Until Queen Bess her leashes slip't
And let her sea-dogs loose.

God! how they sprang and how they tore!
The Gilberts, Hawkins, Drake!
Remember, Boy, they were your sires:
They made the Spaniard quake.

Dick Grenville with a single ship.
Struck all the Spanish line:
One Devon knight to the Spanish Dons:
One ship to fifty and nine.

When Spain in San Ulloa's Bay
Her sacred treaty broke,
Stout Hawkins fought his way through fire
And gave her stroke for stroke.

A bitter malt Spain brewed that day,
She drained it to the lees:
The thunder of her guns awoke
The Dragon of The Seas.

From coast to coast he ravaged far,
A scourge with flaming breath:
Where'er the Spaniard sailed his ships,
Sailed Francis Drake and Death.

No coast was safe against his ire;
Secure no furthest shore;
The fairest day oft sank in fire
Before the Dragon's roar.

He made th' Atlantic surges red
Round every Spanish keel,
Piled Spanish decks with Spanish dead,
The noblest of Castile.

From Del Fuego's beetling coast
To sleety Hebrides
He hounded down the Spanish host
And swept the flaming seas.

He fought till on Spain's inmost lakes
'Mid Orange bowers set,
La Mancha's maidens feared to sail
Lest they the Dragon met.

King Philip, of his ravin' reft,
Called for " the Pirate's " head;
The great Queen laughed his wrath to scorn
And knighted Drake instead.

And gave him ships and sent him forth
To sweep the Spanish Main,
For England and for England's brood,
And sink the fleets of Spain.

And well he wrought his mighty work,
Till on that fatal day
He met his only conqueror,
In Nombre Dios Bay.

There in his shotted hammock swung
Amid the surges' sweep,
He waits the look-out's signal cry
Across the quiet deep,

And dreams of dark Ulloa's bar,
And Spanish treachery,
And how he tracked Magellan far
Across the unknown sea.

But if Spain fire a single shot
Upon the Spanish Main,
She 'll come to deem the Dragon dead
Has waked to life again.