101 Poems, Number 27

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

27: “Casabianca” (“The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck”), 1826, by Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)

I’m not sure why I learned these lines—

Perhaps because the very first

Among them very well combines

The image of pure fear—the worst,

Of course, is yet to come—read on!

I’ve learned the poem’s based on fact*—

Historical events long gone.

A naval war—a ship attacked.

I read this first when just a boy—

And fiery death was horror. Pure.

Oh, not a thing I could enjoy—

But still it had a strange allure.

And so, I guess, in later years

I thought that I would memorize

This story that had once brought tears

Into my fearful boyhood eyes.

*the Battle of the Nile, 1798; the poem’s title is the boy’s last name

Link to poem.