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! But avast with the War! ‘Why recall racking days Since set up anew are the slip’s started stays? Nor less, though the gale we have left behind, Well may the heave o’ the sea remind. It irks me now, as it troubled me then, To think o’ the fate in the madness o’ men. If Dick was with Farragut on the night-river, When the boom-chain we burst in the fire-raft’s glare, That blood-dyed the visage as red as the liver; In the _Battle for the Bay_ too if Dick had a share, And saw one aloft a-piloting the war— Trumpet in the whirlwind, a Providence in place— Our Admiral old whom the captains huzza, Dick joys in the man nor brags about the race.