arming spars
And multitudinous decks that heaved and sank
Like earthquake-smitten palaces, when doom
Comes, with one stride, across the pomp of kings.
All round them shouted the everlasting sea,
Burst in white thunders on the streaming poops
And blinded fifty thousand eyes with spray.
Once, as a gorgeous galleon, drenched with blood
Began to founder and settle, a British captain
Called from his bulwarks, bidding her fierce crew
Surrender and come aboard. Straight through the heart
A hundred muskets answered that appeal.
_Sink or destroy_! The deadly signal flew
From mast to mast of England. Once, twice, thrice,
A huge sea-castle heaved her haggled bulk
Heavenward, and with a cry that rent the heavens
From all her crowded decks, and one deep roar
As of a cloven world or the dark surge
Of chaos yawning, sank: the swirling slopes
Of the sweeping billowy hills for a moment swarmed
With struggling insect-men, sprinkling the foam
With tossing arms; then the indifferent sea
Rolled its grey smoking waves across the place
Where they had been. Here a great galleasse poured
Red rivers through her scuppers and torn flanks,
And there a galleon, wrapped in creeping fire,
Suddenly like a vast volcano split
Asunder, and o'er the vomiting sulphurous clouds
And spouting spread of crimson, flying spars
And heads torn from their trunks and scattered limbs
Leapt, hideous gouts of death, against the glare.
Hardly the thrust of a pike away, the ships
Of England flashed and swerved, till in one mass
Of thunder-blasted splendour and shuddering gloom
Those gorgeous floating citadels huddled and shrank
Their towers, and all the glory of dawn that rolled
And burned along the tempest of their banners
Withered, as on a murderer's face the light
Withers before the accuser. All their proud
Castles and towers and heaven-wide clouds of sail
Shrank to a darkening horror, like the heart
Of Evil, plucked from midnight's fiercest gloom,
With all its curses quivering and alive;
A horror of wild masts and tangled spars,
Like some great kraken with a thousand arms
Torn from the filthiest cavern of the deep,
Writhing, and spewing forth its venomous fumes
On every side. _Sink or destroy_!--all day
The deadly signal flew; and ever the sea
Swelled higher, and