The Sinking of the Merrimack

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.

'Twas the voice of our free Northern mountains that broke
In the sound of her guns, from her stout ribs of oak:
'Twas 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!