 | The Anarchiad |  |
AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.—No. X.
EXTRACT FROM THE ANARCHIAD, BOOK XXIV.
THE SPEECH OF HESPER.
At the opening of this Book, and previous to the great and final conflict, which, by what is legible at the close of the poem, appears to establish the Anarch in his dominion of the new world, Hesper, with a solicitude and energy becoming his high station and the importance of the subject, makes his last solemn address to his principal counselors and sages, whom he had convened at Philadelphia.
From kindred realms, to save the sinking State,
A boundless sway on one broad base to rear—
My voice paternal claims your listening ear;
O'er the wide clime my fostering cares extend,
Your guardian genius, and your deathless friend.
Swept from these shores the last remains of war—
Bade each glad State that boasts Columbia's name,
To bliss unbounded stretch their ardent eyes,
And wealth and empire from their labor rise—
My raptur'd sons beheld the discord cease,
And sooth'd their sorrows in the songs of peace.
Fade like the fleeting visions of the morn?
Shall this fair fabric from its base be hurl'd,
And whelm in dust the glories of the world?
Will ye, who saw the heavens tempestuous lower—
Who felt the arm of irritated power—
Whose souls, descending with the wasting flood,
Prepar'd the firm foundations, built in blood;
By discord seiz'd, will ye desert the plan—
Th'unfinish'd Babel of the bliss of man?
In graves obscure, can tell what freedom cost,
Tho' conquest smil'd; there slain amid the crowd,
And plunged, promiscuous, with no winding shroud,
No friendly hand their gory wounds to lave,
The thousands moulder in a common grave.
Not so thy son, oh Laurens! gasping lies,
Too daring youth, war's latest sacrifice;
The purple drops his snow-white bosom stain;
His cheek of rose is wan; a deadly hue
Sits on his face, that chills with lucid dew.
There Warren, glorious with expiring breath,
A comely corse, that smiles in ghastly death:
See Mercer bleed; and, o'er yon wintry wall,
'Mid heaps of slain, see great Montgomery fall!
Their sinews stiffen'd, silver'd o'er their hair;
Their toils forgotten by the sons of scorn;
This hateful truth still aggravates their pain,
In vain they conquer'd! and they bled in vain!
Go, then, ye remnants of inglorious wars,
Disown your marks of merit, hide your scars,
Of lust, of power, of titled pride accurs'd;
Steal to your graves, dishonored, and abus'd.
And discord riots o'er the ungrateful land;
Lo! to the north, a wild, adventurous crew,
In desperate mobs, the savage state renew;
Each felon chief his maddening thousands draws,
And claims bold license from the bond of laws;
In other States the chosen fires of shame
Stamp their vile knaveries with a legal name;
In honor's seat, the sons of meanness swarm,
And Senates base the work which mobs perform;
To wealth, to power, the foes of union rise,
While foes deride you, and while friends despise.
Inglorious authors of intestine war;
Pens dipp'd in gall, and lips inspir'd with lies!
Ye fires of ruin, prime detested cause
Of bankrupt faith, annihilated laws—
Of selfish systems, jealous, local schemes,
And union'd empire lost in empty dreams;
Your names, expanding with your growing crime,
Shall float, disgustful, down the stream of time;
Each future age applaud th'avenging song,
And outraged nature vindicate the wrong.
Beyond the confines of these climes aspire—
Beyond the praise of a transient age,
To live, immortal, in the patriot page;
Who greatly dare, though warring worlds oppose,
To pour just vengeance on their country's foes.
Celestial aid, the voice of virtue draws;
The curtains blue, of yon expansion, rend—
From opening skies heroic shades descend.
See, rob'd in light, the forms of heaven appear;
The warrior spirits of your friends are near—
Each on his steed of fire, (his quiver stor'd
With shafts of vengeance,) grasps his flaming sword:
The burning blade waves high, and, dipt in blood,
Hurls plagues and death on discord's faithless brood.
The federal Union sinks in endless shade;
Each feeble call, that warns the realms around,
Seems the faint echo of a dying sound;
Each requisition wastes in fleeting air,
And not one State regards the powerless prayer.
Long on the lap of softening luxury nurst,
What fickle frenzy raves! what visions strange
Inspire your bosoms with the lust of change,
And frames the wish to fly from fancy's ill,
And yield your freedom to a monarch's will?
Where tyrants govern with unbounded sway;
See the long pomp, in gorgeous state display'd—
The tinsel's guards, the squadron's horse parade;
See heralds gay, with emblems on their vest—
In tissued robes, tall, beauteous pages, drest;
Where moves the pageant throng, unnumber'd slaves,
Lords, Dukes, and Princes, titulary knaves,
Confus'dly thine, the purple gemm'd with stars,
Sceptres, and globes, and crowns, and ruby'd cars,
On gilded orbs the thundering chariots roll'd,
Steeds snorting fire, and champing bits of gold,
A loftier gait, and lifts his neck of plumes.
High on the moving throne, and near the van,
The tyrant rides, the chosen scourge of man:
Clarions, and flutes, and drums, his way prepare,
And shouting millions rend the conscious air—
Millions, whose ceaseless toils the pomp sustain,
Whose hour of stupid joy repays an age of pain.
Hereditary kings, by right divine;
'Tis theirs to riot on all nature's spoils—
For them, with pangs unblest, the peasant toils;
For them, the earth prolific teems with grain;
Their's the dread labors of the devious main;
Annual, for them, the wasted land renews
The gifts oppressive, and extorted dues;
For them, when slaughter spreads the gory plains
The life-blood gushes from a thousand veins—
While the dull herd, of earth-born pomp afraid,
Adore the power that coward meanness made.
War guides the choice—each candidate, abhorr'd,
Founds his firm title on the wasting sword;
Wades to the throne, amid the sanguine flood,
And dips his purple in a nation's blood.
O'er the vile crowd proud oligarchy lowers;
While each aristocrat affects a throne—
Beneath a thousand kings, the poor plebeians groan.
The giddy rage of democratic States,
Whose pop'lar breath, high-blown in restless tide,
No laws can temper, and no reason guide:
An equal sway, their mind indignant spurns,
To wanton change, the bliss of freedom turns;
Led by wild demagogues, the factious crowd,
Mean, fierce, imperious, insolent and loud,
Nor fame, nor wealth, nor power, nor system draws—
They see no object, and perceive no cause;
But feel, by turns, in one disastrous hour,
Th'extremes of license, and th'extremes of power.
Your realm to parcel into petty States?
Shall lordly Hudson part contending powers,
And broad Potomac lave two hostile shores?
Must Alleghany's sacred summits bear
The impious bulwarks of perpetual war?—
His hundred streams receive your heroes slain,
And bear your sons inglorious to the main?
Will States cement, by feebler bonds allied,
Or join more closely, as they more divide?
Will this vain scheme bid restless factions cease,
Check foreign wars, or fix internal peace?—
Call public credit from her grave to rise,
Or gain in grandeur what they lose in size?
In this weak realm, can countless kingdoms start,
Strong with new force, in each divided part—
While empire's head, dissected into four,
Gains life by severance of diminish'd power?
So, when the philosophic hand divides
The full-grown polypus, in genial tides,
Each severed part, infused with latent life,
Acquires new vigor from the friendly knife;
O'er peopled sands the puny insects creep,
Till the next wave absorbs them in the deep.
From these lov'd regions, to her native sky?
She fixed her feet beyond the watery waste;
Her docile sons (enough of power resign'd,
And natural rights in social leagues combin'd)
In virtue firm, though jealous in her cause,
Gave Senates force, and energy to laws;
From ancient habit, local powers obey,
Yet feel no reverence for one general sway;
For breach of faith, no keen compulsion feel,
And find no interest in the federal weal.
But know, ye favor'd race, one potent head
Must rule your States, and strike your foes with dread,
The finance regulate, the trade control,
Live through the empire, and accord the whole.
Through ruined realms the voice of Union calls;
Loud as the trump of heaven through darkness roars,
When gyral gusts entomb Caribbean towers—
When nature trembles, through the deeps convuls'd,
And ocean foams, from craggy cliffs repuls'd;
On you she calls! attend the warning cry:
“Ye Live United, or Divided Die!”
Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens joined the army in 1777, from which time he was foremost in danger. In opposing a foraging party of the British, near Combahee River, in South Carolina, on the seventeenth of April, 1782, he was mortally wounded, and died at the age of twenty-six years.
Major-General Joseph Warren was the first victim of rank that fell in the struggle of the Colonies with Great Britain. He received his commission in the army four days previous to the battle of Bunker Hill. When the intrenchments were made upon the fatal spot, he, to encourage the men within the lines, went down from Cambridge, and joined them, as a volunteer, on the eventful day of the battle, the seventeenth of June. Just as the retreat commenced, a ball struck him on the head, and he died in the trenches, aged thirty-five years.
Brigadier-General Hugh Mercer, a native of Scotland, served, under Washington, in the war against the French and Indians, which terminated in 1763. In the battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777, he commanded the van of the American army, composed principally of southern militia; and while gallantly exerting himself to rally them, received three wounds from a bayonet, from the effects of which he died, on the nineteenth of January.
Major-General Richard Montgomery, a native of Ireland, took command of the northern detachment of the Continental forces, in the fall of 1775. He succeeded in reducing Fort Chambree, and on the third of November captured St. John's. On the twelfth, he took Quebec. The city was besieged, and Montgomery, in the midst of a heavy fall of snow, advanced, at the head of the New York troops, along the St. Lawrence; and having assisted, with his own hands, in pulling up the pickets which obstructed his approach to one of the barriers that he was determined to force, he was pushing forward, when one of the guns of the battery was discharged, and he was killed, with two of his aids. This was the only gun that was fired, for the enemy had been struck with consternation, and all but one or two had fled. Montgomery was thirty-eight years of age.
Referring to the emission of Paper Money, a depreciated currency authorized by the Legislatures of Rhode Island and several other States. See Appendix, B.
The history of Poland, political and religious, is one of the most sorrowful in all the annals of the Papal States of the Old World. For centuries this land has been the scene of intestine and desolating war. Possessing neither a monarchical, oligarchical, nor yet a republican form of government, the throne has, from time immemorial, been usurped by force, and the assumed right to reign been contested, by sectional candidates and by adventurers, at the point of the sword; while the victorious generals and leaders have almost invariably waded to the throne through the blood of the nation.
| The Anarchiad | |