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AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 27 |
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subject of a song, the opening lines of which have a vigor and strong rhythm not maintained throughout.
Old Ross, Cochrane, and Cockbnrn too,
And many a bloody villain more, Swore with their bloody, savage crew That they would plunder Baltimore.
The naval service during the civil war did not produce any songs that achieved popularity in comparison with that won by the songs of land service, like John Brown's Body, The Year of Jubilo, and Marching through Georgia, and in fact was singularly deficient in poetry, with the remarkable exception of the productions of Mr. Henry Howard Brownell. There were few single-ship engagements except the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and the Kearsarge and the Alabama, and the blockading service was not calculated to inspire the martial muse.
The two great naval achievements of the war were the capture of New Orleans and of the forts in Mobile Bay by the fleets under Farragut; and these were celebrated in poetry worthy of them — and no more can be said — by Henry Howard Brownell, who witnessed the second from the deck of Admiral Farragut's flagship. The fire, spirit, and grand fighting elan of The Bay Fight have never been surpassed in English poetry, and the |
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