Answer: Oliver Wendell Holmes uses specific battle imagery to suggest that war is frenzied and dangerous.
Step-by-step explanation: In the given excerpt, the poet has tried to picture a scene of the beginning of a war. The words used in the stanza depict how suddenly the war begins after the cannon fires. The loud and fearful war cries are another indication of the beginning of the war. He further says that not the force of the air flowing over the ocean, but the reverberation created by the noise of the war will move the clouds.