Our quarter-deck was crowded, the waist was all aglow;
    Men hung upon the taffrail half scorched, but loth to go;
    Our captain sat where once he stood, and would not quit his chair. 
    He bade his comrades leap for life, and leave him bleeding there.

    The guns were hushed on either side, the Frenchmen lowered boats,
    They flung us planks and hen-coops, and everything that floats. 
    They risked their lives, good fellows! to bring their rivals aid. 
    Twas by the conflagration the peace was strangely made.

La Surveillante was like a sieve; the victors had no rest; They had to dodge the east wind to reach the port of Brest.  And where the waves leapt lower and the riddled ship went slower, In triumph, yet in funeral guise, came fisher-boats to tow her.

    They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead;
    And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head. 
    Then spoke the French Lieutenant, “Twas fire that won, not we. 
    You never struck your flag to us; you’ll go to England free.”

Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine, A year when nations ventured against us to combine, Quebec was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not; But thanks be to the French book wherein they’re not forgot.

    Now you, if you’ve to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind
    Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
    Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
    And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.

 THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR.

“The Skeleton in Armour” (Longfellow, 1807-82) is a “boy’s poem.”  It it pure literature and good history.

   “Speak! speak! thou fearful guest! 
    Who, with thy hollow breast
    Still in rude armour drest,
      Comest to daunt me! 
    Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
    But with thy fleshless palms
    Stretched, as if asking alms,
      Why dost thou haunt me?”

    Then from those cavernous eyes
    Pale flashes seemed to rise,
    As when the Northern skies
      Gleam in December;
    And, like the water’s flow
    Under December’s snow,
    Came a dull voice of woe
      From the heart’s chamber.

   “I was a Viking old! 
    My deeds, though manifold,
    No Skald in song has told,
      No Saga taught thee! 
    Take heed that in thy verse
    Thou dost the tale rehearse,
    Else dread a dead man’s curse;
      For this I sought thee.

   “Far in the Northern Land,
    By the wild Baltic’s strand,
    I, with my childish hand,
      Tamed the gerfalcon;
    And, with my skates fast-bound,
    Skimmed the half-frozen Sound,
    That the poor whimpering hound
      Trembled to walk on.