THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS

They say the Spanish ships are out

To seize the Spanish Main;

Reach down the volume, Boy, and read

The story o'er again:

How when the Spaniard had the might,

He drenched the Earth, like rain,

With Saxon blood and made it Death

To sail the Spanish Main.

With torch and steel; with stake and rack

He trampled out God's Truce

Until Queen Bess her leashes slip't

And let her sea-dogs loose.

God! how they sprang and how they tore!

The Gilberts, Hawkins, Drake!

Remember, Boy, they were your sires:

They made the Spaniard quake.

Dick Grenville with a single ship

Struck all the Spanish line:

One Devon knight to the Spanish Dons:

One ship to fifty and nine.

When Spain in San Ulloa's Bay

Her sacred treaty broke,

Stout Hawkins fought his way through fire

And gave her stroke for stroke.

A bitter malt Spain brewed that day,

She drained it to the lees:

The thunder of her guns awoke

The Dragon of The Seas.

From coast to coast he ravaged far,

A scourge with flaming breath:

Where'er the Spaniard sailed his ships,

Sailed Francis Drake and Death.

No coast was safe against his ire;

Secure no furthest shore;

The fairest day oft sank in fire

Before the Dragon's roar.

He made th’ Atlantic surges red

Round every Spanish keel,

Piled Spanish decks with Spanish dead,

The noblest of Castile.

From Del Fuego's beetling coast

To sleety Hebrides

He hounded down the Spanish host

And swept the flaming seas.

He fought till on Spain's inmost lakes

‘ Mid Orange bowers set,

La Mancha's maidens feared to sail

Lest they the Dragon met.

King Philip, of his ravin’ reft,

Called for “the Pirate's” head;

The great Queen laughed his wrath to scorn

And knighted Drake instead.

And gave him ships and sent him forth

To sweep the Spanish Main,

For England and for England's brood,

And sink the fleets of Spain.

And well he wrought his mighty work,

Till on that fatal day

He met his only conqueror,

In Nombre Dios Bay.

There in his shotted hammock swung

Amid the surges’ sweep,

He waits the look-out's signal cry

Across the quiet deep,

And dreams of dark Ulloa's bar,

And Spanish treachery,

And how he tracked Magellan far

Across the unknown sea.

But if Spain fire a single shot

Upon the Spanish Main,

She‘ ll come to deem the Dragon dead

Has waked to life again.