YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND: A NAVAL ODE. I. YE Mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, II. The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell, Your manly hearts shall glow, While the stormy winds do blow, III. Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow: When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. IV. The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; 1800. THIS naval ode was written at Altona, in the winter of 1800, when the poet was twenty-three years of age; it appeared first in the Morning Chronicle with the following title, "Alteration of the old ballad 'Ye Gentlemen of England,' composed on the prospect of a Russian war," and signed, "Amator Patriæ." At this time the South Eastern and Southern coasts of England were first fortified with martello towers as a defence against foreign invasion; to this fact reference is elegantly made in the lines "Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep." The subject was first suggested by hearing the air of the old ballad before mentioned played at the house of a friend in Scotland; and when the rumour of war with Russia became a general topic of conversation among the British at Altona, it aroused Campbell's patriotism, and hence the result in verse. BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. I. OF Nelson and the North, Sing the glorious day's renown, When to battle fierce came forth All the might of Denmark's crown, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand, In a bold determined hand, And the Prince of all the land Like leviathans afloat, II. Lay their bulwarks on the brine; On the lofty British line: It was ten of April morn by the chime: As they drifted on their path, There was silence deep as death; III. But the might of England flush'd And her van the fleeter rush'd O'er the deadly space between. 'Hearts of oak!' our captain cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back ; Their shots along the deep slowly boom : Then ceased-and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail; Or, in conflagration pale, Light the gloom.— V. Out spoke the victor then, As he hail'd them o'er the wave; 'Ye are brothers! ye are men! And we conquer but to save:— |