Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BATTLE SONG OF THE OREGON, by WALLACE RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BATTLE SONG OF THE OREGON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The billowy headlands swiftly fly
Last Line: The race that rules the wave!
Alternate Author Name(s): Groot, Cecil De
Subject(s): Oregon (ship); Patriotism; Spanish-american War (1898)


THE billowy headlands swiftly fly
The crested path I keep,
My ribboned smoke stains many a sky,
My embers dye the deep;
A continent has hardly space --
Mid-ocean little more,
Wherein to trace my eager race
While clang the alarums of war.

I come, the warship Oregon,
My wake a whitening world,
My cannon shotted, thundering on
With battle-flags unfurled.
My land knows no successful foe --
Behold, to sink or save,
From stoker's flame to gunner's aim
The race that rules the wave!

A nation's prayers my bulwark are
Though ne'er so wild the sea;
Flow time or tide, come storm or star,
Throbs my machinery.
Lands Spain has lost forever peer
From every lengthening coast,
Till rings the cheer that proves me near
The flag of Columbia's host.

Defiantly I have held my way
From the vigorous shore where Drake
Dreamed a New Albion in the day
He left New Spain a-quake;
His shining course retraced, I fight
The self-same foe he fought,
All earth to light with signs of might
Which God our Captain wrought.

Made mad, from Santiago's mouth
Spain's ships-of-battle dart:
My bulk comes broadening from the south,
A hurricane at heart;
Its desperate armories blaze and boom,
Its ardent engines beat;
And fiery doom finds root and bloom
Aboard of the Spanish fleet....

The hundredweight of the Golden Hind
With me are ponderous tons,
The ordnance great her deck that lined
Would feed my ravening guns,
Her spacious reach in months and years
I've shrunk to nights and days;
Yet in my ears are ringing cheers
Sir Frank himself would raise:

For conquereth not mine engines' breath
Nor sides steel-clad and strong,
Nor bulk, nor rifles red with death:
To Spain, too, these belong;
What made that old Armada break
This newer victory won:
Jehovah spake by the sons of Drake
At each incessant gun.

I come, the warship Oregon,
My wake a whitening world,
My cannon shotted, thundering on
With battle-flags unfurled.
My land knows no successful foe --
Behold, to sink or save,
From stoker's flame to gunner's aim
The race that rules the wave!





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