Old Ironsides

Although it would be Oliver Wendell Holmes’s oldest son and namesake, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who would have a stellar career as a jurist, ultimately serving for more than 30 years as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, it is the father who here displays the adroit and subtle argument skills of a master lawyer.

Knowing the poem will argue that to destroy the iconic warship Constitution would be to dishonor the place the ship had earned in the annals of American naval history, the speaker begins by demanding that the ship be destroyed, an example of verbal irony: “Ay,” the first line opens, in other words, go ahead and “tear her tattered ensign down!” (Line 1). The exclamation point establishes the energetic counterargument the speaker will pursue in this opening stanza. Go ahead, do what no British man-of-war had been able to do: strike Old Ironsides’s colors. Long has the flag waved “on high” (Line 2), long has it been the inspirational ship for three generations of American sailors who, seeing that same flag approach during an engagement, have been inspired to rise to noble battle. The poem thus appears to offer as evidence in favor of destroying the ship the very same evidence that would suggest destroying the ship would be a mistake.