One daring leap in the dark,

Three mortal hours, at the most, And hell lies stiff and stark

On a hundred leagues of coast.

For the mighty Gulf is ours,

The bay is lost and won,
An Empire is lost and won!
Land, if thou yet hast flowers,
Twine them in one more wreath
Of tenderest white and red,
(Twin buds of glory and death!)
For the brows of our brave dead,
For thy Navy's noblest Son.

Joy, O Land, for thy sons,
Victors by flood and field!
The traitor walls and guns
Have nothing left but to yield; —
(Even now they surrender!)

And the ships shall sail once more,
And the cloud of war sweep on

Thine the long decks all slaughtersprent,

The weary rows of cots that lie With wrecks of strong men, marred and rent,

'Neath Pensacola's sky.

And thine the iron caves and dens Wherein the flame our war-fleet drives;

The fiery vaults, whose breath is

men's

Most dear and precious lives!

Ah, ever, when with storm sublime Dread Nature clears our murky air,

Thus in the crash of falling crime
Some lesser guilt must share.

Full red the furnace fires must glow
That melt the ore of mortal kind:
The Mills of God are grinding slow,
But ah, how close they grind!

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,

Judging each step as though the way were plain;

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph

Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain:

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet

The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,

Between the mourners at his head and feet,

Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer,

To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;

To make me own this hind of princes peer,

This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue,

Noting how to occasion's height he rose:

How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true;

How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.