— — Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie,
Two, farther south, affront the pitying eye —
There, the black Scorpion at her mooring rides,
There, Strombolo swings, yielding to the tides;
Here, bulky Jersey fills a larger space,
And Hunter , to all hospitals disgrace —
Thou, Scorpion , fatal to thy crowded throng,
Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song,
Requir'st my lay — thy sultry decks I know,
And all the torments that exist below!
The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills
Drain'd through her bottom in a thousand rills,
Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans,
Scarce on the waters she sustain'd her bones;
Here, doom'd to toil, or founder in the tide,
At the moist pumps incessantly we ply'd,
Here, doom'd to starve, like famish'd dogs we tore
The scant allowance, that our tyrants bore.
. . .

One master o'er the murdering tribe was plac'd,
By him the rest were honour'd or disgrac'd; —
Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led
He came to see the dying and the dead —
He came — but anger so deform'd his eye,
And such a faulchion glitter'd on his thigh,
And such a gloom his visage darken'd o'er,
And two such pistols in his hands he bore!
That, by the gods! — with such a load of steel
He came, we thought, to murder, not to heal.
. . .

— — Each day, at least three carcases we bore,
And scratch'd them graves along the sandy shore;
By feeble hands the shallow graves were made,
No stone memorial o'er the corpses laid;
In barren sands, and far from home, they lie,
No friend to shed a tear, when passing by;
O'er the mean tombs insulting Britons tread,
Spurn at the sand, and curse the rebel dead.