Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

THE DANISH SAILOR

Far by the Baltic shore,
Where storied Elsinore
Rears its dark walls, invincible to time;
Where yet Horatio walks,
And with Marcellus talks,
And Hamlet dreams soliloquy sublime;

Though forms of Old Romance,
Mail-clad, with shield and lance,
Are laid in 'fair Ophelia's' watery tomb,
Still, passion rules her hour,
Love, Hate, Revenge, have power,
And hearts, in Elsinore, know joy and gloom.

Grouped round a massy gun
Black sleeping in the sun,
The belted gunners list to many a tale
Told by grim Jarl, the tar,
Old Danish dog of war,
Of his young days in battle and in gale.

The medal at his breast,
The single-sleeved blue vest,
His thin, white hair, tossed by the Norway breeze,
His knotted, horny hand,
And wrinkled face, dark tanned,
Tell of the times when Nelson sailed the seas.

Steam-winged, upon the tides
A gallant vessel glides,
Two royal flags float blended at her fore,
Gay convoyed by a fleet,
Whose answering guns repeat
The joyous 'God speeds' thundered from the shore.

'Look, comrades! there she goes,
Old Denmark's Royal Rose,
Plucked but to wither on a foreign strand;
Can Copenhagen's dames
Forget their country's shames—
Her sons, unblushing, clasp a British hand?

'Since that dark day of shame
Which blends with Nelson's fame,
When the prince of all the land led us on,
I little thought to see
Our noblest bend the knee
To any English queen, or her son.

'What the fate of battle gave
To our victor on the wave,
Was as nothing to the bitter, conscious sting,
That our haughty island foe
Struck a sudden, traitor blow,
In the blessed peace of God and the king.

'Ay, you were not yet born
On that cursed April morn,
When they sprang like red wolves on their prey,
And our princeliest and best
By our humblest lay at rest,
In the heart's blood of Denmark, on that day.

'And now, their lady queen,
O'er our martyrs' graves between,
Stoops to cull our cherished bud for her heir,
And the servile, fickle crowd
Shout their shameless joy aloud,
All but one old crippled tar—who was there!

'Till the memory shall fail
Of that treach'rous, bloody tale,
Or the grief, and the rage, and the wrong,
Shall enforce atonement due,
On some Danish Waterloo,
To be chanted by our countrymen in song,

'I will keep my love and truth
For the Denmark of my youth,
Nor clasp hands with her enemies alive;
Ay, I'd train this very gun
On that British prince and son,
Who comes here, in his arrogance, to wive.

'When I gave my good right arm,
And my blood was spouting warm
O'er my dying brother's face, as we lay,
I played a better part,
I bore a prouder heart,
Than the proudest in that pageant bears to-day.

'—There floats the Royal Bride,
On that unreturning tide;—
By the blood of all the sea-kings of yore,
'Twere better for her fame,
That Denmark sunk her shame
Where the maelstrom might drown it in his roar!'