A passage from “John Brown’s Body”
By: Stephen Vincent Benet
The sinking of the world’s old sea-bitten names,
Temeraire, Victory, and Constellation,
Serapis, Bon Homme Richard, Golden Hind,
Galleys of Antony, galleys of Carthage,
Galleons with gilded Virgins, galleasses,
Viking long-serpents, siren-haunted galliots,
Argos and argosies and the Achaean pride,
Moving to sea in one long wooden wall
Behind the huge ghost-flagship of the Ark
In such a swelling cloud of phantom-sail
They whitened Ocean–going down by the head,
Green water seeping through the battened ports,
Spreading along the scrubbed and famous decks,
Going down—going down—going down—to Mermaid-pools,
To fiddlers Green—to the dim barnacle thrones,
Where Davy Jones drinks everlasting rum
With the sea-horses of his sunken dreams.