The Sack Of Baltimore
By Thomas Osborne Davis
The summer sun is falling soft on Carberys hundred isles,
The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriels rough defiles;
Old Innisherkins crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird,
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard:
The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play;
The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray;
And full of love, and peace, and rest, its daily labor oer,
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore.
A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there;
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth, or sea, or air!
The massive capes and ruind towers seem conscious of the calm;
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm.
So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that glide
Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against the ebbing tide.
Oh, some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore!
They bring some lover to his bride who sighs in Baltimore.
All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street,
And these must be the lovers friends, with gently gliding feet
A stifled gasp, a dreamy noise! The roof is in a flame!
From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame,
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabres fall,
And oer each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl.
The yell of Allah! breaks above the prayer, and shriek, and roar:
O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore!
Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword;
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gord;
Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild;
Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child:
But see! yon pirate strangled lies, and crushd with splashing heel,
While oer him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel:
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store,
There s one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore.
Midsummer morn in woodland nigh the birds begin to sing,
They see not now the milking maids,deserted is the spring;
Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant Bandons town,
These hookers crossd from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown;
They only found the smoking walls with neighbors blood besprent,
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went,
Then dashd to sea, and passd Cape Clear, and saw, five leagues before,
The pirate-galley vanishing that ravaged Baltimore.
Oh, some must tug the galleys oar, and some must tend the steed;
This boy will bear a Scheiks chibouk, and that a Beys jerreed.
Oh, some are for the arsenals by beauteous Dardanelles;
And some are in the caravan to Meccas sandy dells.
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey:
She s safeshes deadshe stabbd him in the midst of his Serai!
And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore,
She only smiled, ODriscolls child; she thought of Baltimore.
T is two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band,
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand,
Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch is seen:
T is Hackett of Dungarvanhe who steerd the Algerine!
He fell amid a sullen shout with scarce a passing prayer,
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there.
Some mutterd of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman oer;
Some cursd him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore.