Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/248

POEMS OF OCCASION For now the years are sped—

The proud Republic claims her dead.

Atlantic waves, that smiled

Of old so oft to greet your child,

List not to hear his battle-orders ring;

Care not to break his sleep,

But softly, softly bring

Your nursling of the deep,

With his birthright flag above him,

To the shores that own and love him,—

Of old their rover wild,

Now held in slumber as a child.

The oaken ship that won

His storied sea-fight, gun to gun,

To Freedom's flag its red baptism gave,—

Aflame, still made reply,

Fought on to victory,

Then plunged beneath the wave.

Let the squadrons close around him

Till the nation's hands have crowned him

Whose fierce sea-fight he won

'Twixt the setting and the rising of the sun.

Not far from ocean's strand,

His tomb, made lasting by her hand,

Shall henceforth tell within the guarded field

Of him who that dread night

Began anew the fight,

And, sinking, could not yield.

Down the lengthened line bequeath it,

Let our sailor sons enwreathe it,

And the challenge and command

Be heard anear it and the strand.

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