| |
| GAUNT rocks of death that darkly lay, | |
| Unstirred by tide or river’s sway, | |
| Against the glory of the day | |
| The ships of war were still. | |
| Kindred in color to the wave, | 5 |
| Kindred in menace to the grave, | |
| They floated, terrible and brave, | |
| Beneath the peopled hill. | |
| |
| Immovable as forted isles— | |
| Stern guns abristle from their piles— | 10 |
| The anchored squadron marked the miles | |
| From bay to city’s rim. | |
| We gazed upon the steely chain— | |
| The shackles of the mighty main— | |
| Built, by our will, for human pain, | 15 |
| And felt the grandeur grim. | |
| |
| But sudden fell the veil of night, | |
| And sudden to the wondering sight, | |
| From far-thronged wave, and wall and height, | |
| We saw the splendor glow. | 20 |
| Phantasmal as a magic dream, | |
| The bosom of the hidden stream | |
| Burst, beautiful, into the gleam | |
| Of lights, long filed and low. | |
| |
| The floating citadels of death, | 25 |
| As by some mystic shibboleth, | |
| Were fashioned, in the space of breath, | |
| Into a fairy scene. | |
| The things that men had made to kill | |
| Stood glorified and sweet and still, | 30 |
| While music reached the shoreward hill | |
| From out the dream-demesne. | |
| |
| But yet again the dawn came, cold. | |
| The deep guns, by their thunder, told | |
| Their power, where the echoes rolled | 35 |
| Against the rocky shore. | |
| And out upon the ocean grey, | |
| Trim, terrible, in close array, | |
| The dreamful, deathful ships away | |
| Went forth for Peace, or War. | 40 |
| |
