Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BALLADE OF OLD NAVIES, by RAY CLARKE ROSE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BALLADE OF OLD NAVIES, by                    
First Line: Gone are the old-time wooden fleets
Last Line: No more we battle man to man.
Subject(s): Navy - United States; Past; War; American Navy


Gone are the old-time wooden fleets,
And gone beyond our last appeal
The tars of old, whose daring feats
Were hampered by no hulls of steel.
Then war was war on timber keel,
And when a naval fight began
Ships clinched and men fought heel to heel—
No more we battle man to man.

Ah, those were days of rare conceits
Of bravery and reckless zeal,
When frigates flared their mammoth sheets
Like wings above the woe and weal
Of strife, and smoke-grimed men could feel
The jar of meeting hulls, and ran
With cutlasses defeat to deal—
No more we battle man to man.

O'er miles of sea the warship greets
Its foe to-day with shots that reel
From armoured decks, and science meets
With might, to turn grim fortune's wheel
Through distances that half reveal
Death's fierce, aerial caravan
And ruin's blackened, sprawling seal—
No more we battle man to man.

ENVOY.

O shade of Jones! could you conceal
Your grief at such a battle plan,
Wherein to science heroes kneel?
No more we battle man to man.





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