Page:Poems Proctor.djvu/64

THE LOST WAR-SLOOP. (The Wasp, 1814.)

O the pride of Portsmouth water,
Toast of every brimming beaker,—
Eighteen hundred and fourteen on land and sea,—
Was the Wasp, the gallant war-sloop,
Built of oaks Kearsarge had guarded,
Pines of Maine to lift her colors high and free!
Every timber scorning cowards;
Every port alert for foemen
From the masthead seen on weather-side or lee;—
With eleven guns to starboard,
And eleven guns to larboard,
All for glory on a morn of May sailed she.

British ships were in the offing;
Swift and light she sped between them,—
Well her daring crew knew shoal and wind and tide;
They had come from Portsmouth river,
Sea-girt Marblehead and Salem,
Bays and islands where the fisher-folk abide;