Poems (Larcom)/The Sinking of the Merrimack

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THE SINKING OF THE MERRIMACK.
[May, 1862.]
GONE down in the flood, and gone out in the flame! What else could she do, with her fair Northern name? Her font was a river whose last drop is free: That river ran boiling with wrath to the sea, To hear of her baptismal blessing profaned,—A name that was Freedom's, by treachery stained.
'T was the voice of our free Northern mountains that broke In the sound of her guns, from her stout ribs of oak: 'T was the might of the free Northern hand you could feel In her sweep and her moulding, from topmast to keel: ​When they made her speak treason (does Hell know of worse?) How her strong timbers shook with the shame of her curse!
Let her go! Should a deck so polluted again Ever ring to the tread of our true Northern men? Let the suicide-ship thunder forth, to the air And the sea she has blotted, her groan of despair! Let her last heat of anguish throb out into flame, Then sink them together,—the ship and the name!
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