Classic Poem

The billows plunge like steeds that bear
The knights with snow-white crests;
The sea-winds blare like bugles where
The Alabama rests.

Old glories from their splendor-mists
Salute with trump and hail
The sword that held the ocean lists
Against the world in mail.

And down from England's storied hills,
From lyric slopes of France,
The old bright wine of valor fills
The chalice of Romance.

For here was Glory's tourney-field,
The tilt-yard of the sea;
The battle-path of kingly wrath,
And kinglier courtesy.

And down the deeps, in sunless heaps,
The gold, the gem, the pearl,
In one broad blaze of splendor belt
Great England like an earl.

And there they rest, the princeliest
Of earth's regalia gems,
The starlight of our Southern Cross,
The Sword of Raphael Semmes.

Like that great glaive that Arthur gave
In guerdon to the sea;
" Excalibur, " that sleeps below,
Until the great sea-bugles blow
The summons of the Free.