Poem: “The Stone Fleet” by Herman Melville

Poems From Battle Pieces

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American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Poems From Battle Pieces
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The Stone Fleet

An Old Sailor’s Lament
December, 1861

I have a feeling for those ships,
    Each worn and ancient one,
With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam:
    Ay, it was unkindly done.
        But so they serve the Obsolete—
        Even so, Stone Fleet!

You’ll say I’m doting; do you think
    I scudded round the Horn in one—
The Tenedos, a glorious
    Good old craft as ever run—
        Sunk (how all unmeet!)
        With the Old Stone Fleet.

An India ship of fame was she,
    Spices and shawls and fans she bore;
A whaler when the wrinkles came—
    Turned off! till, spent and poor,
        Her bones were sold (escheat)!
        Ah! Stone Fleet.

Four were erst patrician keels
    (Names attest what families be),
The Kensington, and Richmond too,
    Leonidas, and Lee:
        But now they have their seat
        With the Old Stone Fleet.

To scuttle them—a pirate deed—
    Sack them, and dismast;
They sunk so slow, they died so hard,
    But gurgling dropped at last.
        Their ghosts in gales repeat
        Woe’s us, Stone Fleet!

And all for naught. The waters pass—
    Currents will have their way;
Nature is nobody’s ally; ’tis well;
    The harbor is bettered—will stay.
        A failure, and complete,
        Was your Old Stone Fleet.

< < < Dupont’s Round Fight
Donelson > > >

American Literature – American Poetry – Herman Melville – Poems by Herman Melville – Poems From Battle Pieces

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Poems From Battle Pieces

The Stone Fleet

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