16And, whistling tunes from hell upon its way, 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,[Pg 25] 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,[Pg 26] 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,
17
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,
Cool'd by no breeze on Hudson's mountain-stream; That not unsung these threescore days shall fall
To black oblivion that would cover all!--
No masts or sails these crowded ships adorn, Dismal to view, neglected and forlorn!
Here, mighty ills oppress the imprison'd throng, Dull were our slumbers, and our nights too long-- From morn to eve along the decks we lay
Scorch'd into fevers by the solar ray;
No friendly awning cast a welcome shade, Once was it promis'd, and was never made; No favours could these sons of death bestow,
'Twas endless cursing, and continual woe: Immortal hatred doth their breasts engage,
And this lost empire swells their souls with rage.[Pg 27] Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie,
Two, farther south, affront the pitying eye-- There, the black Scorpion at her mooring rides, There, Strombolo swings, yielding to the tides; Here, bulky Jersey fills a larger space,
And Hunter, to all hospitals disgrace--
Thou, Scorpion, fatal to thy crowded throng, Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song, Requir'st my lay--thy sultry decks I know, And all the torments that exist below!
The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills Drain'd through her bottom in a thousand rills, Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans, Scarce on the waters she sustain'd her bones; Here, doom'd to toil, or founder in the tide,
At the moist pumps incessantly we ply'd,[28]
Here, doom'd to starve, like famish'd dogs we tore The scant allowance, that our tyrants bore. Remembrance shudders at this scene of fears-- Still in my view some English brute appears,
Some base-born Hessian slave walks threat'ning by, Some servile Scot with murder in his eye[Pg 28]
Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan
Rebellions manag'd so unlike their own! O may I never feel the poignant pain
To live subjected to such fiends again, Stewards and Mates that hostile Britain bore, Cut from the gallows on their native shore;[29]
Their ghastly looks and vengeance-beaming eyes
Still to my view in dismal colours rise-- O may I ne'er review these dire abodes,
These piles for slaughter, floating on the floods,--
And you, that o'er the troubled ocean go,
Strike not your standards to this miscreant foe, Better the greedy wave should swallow all, Better to meet the death-conducted ball,
18
Better to sleep on ocean's deepest bed,
At once destroy'd and number'd with the dead, Than thus to perish in the face of day
Where twice ten thousand deaths one death delay. When to the ocean dives the western sun,
And the scorch'd Tories fire their evening gun, "Down, rebels, down!" the angry Scotchmen cry, "Damn'd dogs, descend, or by our broad swords die!" Hail, dark abode! what can with thee compare--
Heat, sickness, famine, death, and stagnant air-- Pandora's box, from whence all mischief flew, Here real found, torments mankind anew!-- Swift from the guarded decks we rush'd along,
And vainly sought repose, so vast our throng:[Pg 29] Three hundred wretches here, denied all light,
In crowded mansions pass the infernal night, Some for a bed their tatter'd vestments join,
