University of Virginia Library

The hostile Chief, in conquest's honors drest,
Sporting the trophy'd car and nodding crest,
But little thinks, or, thinking, little cares,
How hard the inmate of the cottage fares;
What thousands fall before his mad career;
What countless orphans drop the secret tear:
Laughs at their wrongs, and revels o'er his wine,
Whilst flatterers hail each fiend-like deed, divine.
Yet let him know, and those who wars admire,
Whose music charms them, or whose garbs inspire,
On the red plain, where putrid thousands lie,
Each leaves a friend to heave the pitying sigh,
With grief as poignant, as the pangs that wait
The proud funereal honors of the great.
Each carcase by the carrion worms carest,
Felt as we feel, ere slept his throbbing breast;
A rapid survey cast on friends afar;
And, whilst Destruction roll'd hi scithed car,
Curst, in his pangs, the murderers of mankind,
And dropt the tear for those he left behind.
Even whilst his limbs look ghastly in their wounds,
And war's loud clangor round the battle sounds,
He faintly hears a Daughter's frantic cries;
A Son's pale image swims before his eyes.
Ah, fond delusion! these shall live to tell
The far-off country where their Father fell;
What blazon'd warrior led him to his doom,
To gain, he knew not what, to fight, he knew not whom.

Contracted is the life of man at most,
And much in childhood, much in dotage lost;
Full short the time with prejudice to part,
And tear its hemlock fibrils from the heart;
Yet man, regardless, dares the field of strife,
And fir'd by vengeance, yields his fleeting life:
Yea, and before he met the fatal blow,
He grasp'd the spear, and call'd a Brother—Foe;
Rush'd on to combat, and, with deadly hate,
Plung'd deep the steel, and seal'd that Brother's fate.