He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,
    And he sail’d away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,
    With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow. 
   “Shall we fight or shall we fly? 
    Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
    For to fight is but to die!

   “There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set”
    And Sir Richard said again:  “We be all good Englishmen. 
    Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
    For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”

    Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d a hurrah, and so
    The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,
    With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;
    For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,
    And the little Revenge ran on thro’ the long sea-lane between.

    Thousands of their soldiers looked down from their decks and laugh’d,
    Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft
    Running on and on, till delay’d
    By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
    And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
    Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d.

    And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud
    Whence the thunderbolt will fall
    Long and loud. 
    Four galleons drew away
    From the Spanish fleet that day,
    And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,
    And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

    But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went,
    Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;
    And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,
    For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,
    And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears
    When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder
and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead
and her shame. 
For some were sunk and many were shatter’d, and so could
fight us no more—­
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said, “Fight on! fight on!”
Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck;
And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,
With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said, “Fight on!  Fight on!”