In “Old Ironsides,” Oliver Wendell Holmes conveys that he believes the ship deserves a better ending than it is getting. What does he mean when...

The lines you quote here are the final lines of the poem, and provide an example for exactly that which you are suggesting:  that the ship deserves a more noble death.  The poem was written after a proposition to break down the old, ailing frigate Constitution.  Old Ironsides, as the Constitutionwas affectionately known, was a warship; “her deck” was “once red with heroes’ blood,” yet now “The harpies of the shore shall pluck/The...

The lines you quote here are the final lines of the poem, and provide an example for exactly that which you are suggesting:  that the ship deserves a more noble death.  The poem was written after a proposition to break down the old, ailing frigate Constitution.  Old Ironsides, as the Constitution was affectionately known, was a warship; “her deck” was “once red with heroes’ blood,” yet now “The harpies of the shore shall pluck/The eagle of the sea!”  The ship has a reputation, and is glorious as an eagle, yet those men who decide her fate are beasts who care not for her history or her status.  It is a battle-scarred veteran, this ship, and Holmes is arguing in the poem that it deserves a dignified death – not just to be dismantled unceremoniously.  He laments that the heroic ship could not die in battle, proud and patriotic – she lived by the sword, and it is only right that she should die by the sword:

Oh, better that her shattered bulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the might deep,
And there should be her grave;

So, when he says “And give her to the god of storms/The lightning and the gale!” he is wishing that the ship could be sunk at sea in a storm, and could be buried there where she was of most use – away from the calm, well-attended waters of the harbor.  She should die an honorable death, ravaged yet preserved beneath the surface of the sea.  A death worthy of her reputation and honor.