Ballads of valor and victory being stories in song from the annals of America / by Clinton Scollard and Wallace Rice [electronic text]

Battle Song of the Oregon

(March 19,-July 3, 1898)

The billowy headlands swiftly fly The crested path I keep, My ribboned smoke stains many a sky, My embers dye the deep; A continent has hardly space —Mid-ocean little more, Wherein to trace my eager race While clang the alarums of War.

I come, the warship Oregon, My wake a whitening world, My cannon shotted, thundering onWith battle-flags unfurled. My land knows no successful foe — Behold, to sink or save, From stoker's flame to gunner's aim The race that rules the wave!

A nation's prayers my bulwark are Though never so wild the sea; Flow time or tide, come storm or star, Thrums my machinery. Lands Spain has lost for ever peer From every lengthening coast, Till tings the cheer that proves me near The flag of Columbia's host.

Defiantly I have held my way From the vigorous shore where DRAKE Dreamed a New Albion in the day He left New Spain a-quake; His shining course retraced, I fight The self-same foe he fought, All earth to light with signs of might Which GOD our Captain wrought.

Made mad, from Santiago's mouth Spain's ships-of-battle dart: My bulk comes broadening from the south, A hurricane at heart; Its desperate armories blaze and boom, Its ardent engines beat; And fiery doom finds root and bloom Aboard of the Spanish fleet.…

The hundredweight of the Golden Hind With me are ponderous tons, The ordnance great her deck that lined Would feed my ravening guns, Her spacious reach in months and years I've shrunk to nights and days; Yet in my ears are ringing cheers Sir FRANK himself would raise;

For conquereth not mine engines' breath, Nor sides steel-clad and strong, Nor bulk, nor rifles red with death — To Spain, too, these belong;

What made that old Armada break This newer victory won: JEHOVAH spake by the sons of DRAKE At each incessant gun.

I come, the warship Oregon, My wake a whitening world, My cannon shotted, thundering on With battle-flags unfurled. My land knows no successful foe — Behold, to sink or save, From stoker's flame to gunner's aim The race that rules the wave!