Shrouds, stays, and braces tore at once away, Sails, blocks, and oars in scatter'd fragments fly-- Their softest language was--_submit, or die!_ Repeated cries throughout the ship resound; Now every bullet brought a different wound; 'Twixt wind and water, one assail'd the side, Through this aperture rush'd the briny tide-- 'Twas then the Master trembled for his crew, And bade thy shores, O Delaware, adieu!-- And must we yield to yon' destructive ball, And must our colours to these ruffians fall!-- They fall!--his thunders forc'd our pride to bend, The lofty topsails with their yards descend, And the proud foe, such leagues of ocean pass'd, His wish completed in our woe at last. Convey'd to York, we found, at length, too late, That Death was better than the prisoner's fate; There doom'd to famine, shackles and despair, Condemn'd to breathe a foul, infected air In sickly hulks, devoted while we lay, Successive funerals gloom'd each dismal day-- But what on captives British rage can do, Another Canto, friend, shall let you know. CANTO II.--THE PRISON SHIP The various horrors of these hulks to tell, These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell, Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign, And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd, complain; This be my task--ungenerous Britons, you Conspire to murder those you can't subdue.-- Weak as I am, I'll try my strength to-day And my best arrows at these hell-hounds play, To future years one scene of death prolong, And hang them up to infamy, in song. That Britain's rage should dye our plains with gore, And desolation spread through every shore, None e'er could doubt, that her ambition knew, This was to rage and disappointment due; But that those monsters whom our soil maintain'd, Who first drew breath in this devoted land, Like famish'd wolves, should on their country prey, Assist its foes, and wrest our lives away, This shocks belief--and bids our soil disown Such friends, subservient to a bankrupt crown, By them the widow mourns her partner dead, Her mangled sons to darksome prisons led, By them--and hence my keenest sorrows rise, My friend, my guardian, my Orestes dies; Still for that loss must wretched I complain, And sad Ophelia mourn her favourite swain. Ah! come the day when from this bloody shore Fate shall remove them to return no more-- To scorch'd Bahama shall the traitors go With grief and rage, and unremitting woe, On burning sands to walk their painful round, And sigh through all the solitary ground, Where no gay flower their haggard eyes shall see, And find no shade but from the cypress tree. So much we suffer'd from the tribe I hate, So near they shov'd me to the brink of fate, When two long months in these dark hulks we lay,[27] Barr'd down by night, and fainting all the day In the fierce fervours of the solar beam,