Poems of Freneau :: :: University of Virginia Library

The subject proposed—The discovery of America by Columbus— A philosophical enquiry into the origin of the savages of America —The first planters from Europe—Causes of their migration to America—The difficulties they encountered from the jealousy of the natives—Agriculture descanted on—Commerce and navigation —Science—Future prospects of British usurpation, tyranny, and devastation on this side the Atlantic—The more comfortable one of Independence, Liberty and Peace—Conclusion.

Acasto.
Now shall the adventurous muse attempt a theme
More new, more noble, and more flush of fame
Than all that went before—
Now through the veil of ancient days renew
The period famed when first Columbus touched
These shores so long unknown—through various toils,
Famine, and death, the hero forced his way,
Through oceans pregnant with perpetual storms,
And climates hostile to adventurous man.
But why, to prompt your tears, should we resume,
The tale of Cortez, furious chief, ordained
With Indian blood to dye the sands, and choak,
Famed Mexico, thy streams with dead? or why
Once more revive the tale so oft rehearsed
Of Atabilipa, by the thirst of gold,
(Too conquering motive in the human breast.)
Deprived of life, which not Peru's rich ore
Nor Mexico's vast mines could then redeem?

Better these northern realms demand our song,
Designed by nature for the rural reign,
For agriculture's toil.—No blood we shed
For metals buried in a rocky waste.—
Cursed be that ore, which brutal makes our race
And prompts mankind to shed their kindred blood.

Eugenio.

—But whence arose
That vagrant race who love the shady vale,
And choose the forest for their dark abode?—
For long has this perplext the sages' skill
To investigate.—Tradition lends no aid
To unveil this secret to the human eye,
When first these various nations, north and south,
Possest these shores, or from what countries came,—
Whether they sprang from some primaeval head
In their own lands, like Adam in the east,—
Yet this the sacred oracles deny,
And reason, too, reclaims against the thought:
For when the general deluge drowned the world
Where could their tribes have found security,
Where find their fate, but in the ghastly deep?—
Unless, as others dream, some chosen few
High on the Andes, wrapt in endless snow,
Where winter in his wildest fury reigns,
And subtile aether scarce our life maintains.
But here philosophers oppose the scheme:
This earth, they say, nor hills nor mountains knew
Ere yet the universal flood prevailed;
But when the mighty waters rose aloft,
Roused by the winds, they shook their solid base,
And, in convulsions, tore the deluged world,
'Till by the winds assuaged, again they fell,
And all their ragged bed exposed to view.

Perhaps far wandering toward the northern pole
The streights of Zembla, and the frozen zone,
And where the eastern Greenland almost joins

America's north point, the hardy tribes
Of banished Jews, Siberians, Tartars wild
Came over icy mountains, or on floats,
First reached these coasts, hid from the world beside.—
And yet another argument more strange,
Reserved for men of deeper thought, and late,
Presents itself to view.—In Peleg's days.
(So says the Hebrew seer's unerring pen)
This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe,
Was cleft in twain,—“divided” east and west,
While then perhaps the deep Atlantic roll'd,—
Through the vast chasm, and laved the solid world;
And traces indisputable remain
Of this primaeval land now sunk and lost.—
The islands rising in our eastern main
Are but small fragments of this continent,
Whose two extremities were Newfoundland
And St. Helena.—One far in the north,
Where shivering seamen view with strange surprize
The guiding pole-star glittering o'er their heads;
The other near the southern tropic rears
Its head above the waves—Bermuda's isles,
Cape Verd, Canary, Britain, and the Azores,
With fam'd Hibernia, are but broken parts
Of some prodigious waste, which once sustain'd
Nations and tribes, of vanished memory,
Forests and towns, and beasts of every class,
Where navies now explore their briny way.

Leander.
Your sophistry, Eugenio, makes me smile;
The roving mind of man delights to dwell
On hidden things, merely because they're hid:
He thinks his knowledge far beyond all limit,
And boldly fathoms Nature's darkest haunts;—
But for uncertainties, your broken isles,

Your northern Tartars, and your wandering Jews,
(The flimsy cobwebs of a sophist's brain)
Hear what the voice of history proclaims—
The Carthagenians, ere the Roman yoke
Broke their proud spirits, and enslaved them too,
For navigation were renowned as much
As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets,
Full many a league their venturous seamen sailed
Through streight Gibraltar, down the western shore
Of Africa, to the Canary isles:
By them called Fortunate; so Flaccus sings.
Because eternal spring there clothes the fields
And fruits delicious bloom throughout the year.—
From voyaging here, this inference I draw,
Perhaps some barque with all her numerous crew
Falling to leeward of her destined port,
Caught by the eastern Trade, was hurried on
Before the unceasing blast to Indian isles,
Brazil, La Plata, or the coasts more south—
There stranded, and unable to return,
Forever from their native skies estranged
Doubtless they made these virgin climes their own,
And in the course of long revolving years
A numerous progeny from these arose,
And spread throughout the coasts—those whom we call
Brazilians, Mexicans, Peruvians rich,
The tribes of Chili, Patagon, and those
Who till the shores of Amazon's long stream.—
When first the power of Europe here attained,
Vast empires, kingdoms, cities, palaces
And polished nations stock'd the fertile land.
Who has not heard of Cusco, Lima, and
The town of Mexico—huge cities form'd
From Indian architecture; ere the arms
Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil.—
But here, amid this northern dark domain

No towns were seen to rise.—No arts were here;
The tribes unskill'd to raise the lofty mast,
Or force the daring prow thro' adverse waves,
Gazed on the pregnant soil, and craved alone
Life from the unaided genius of the ground,—
This indicates they were a different race;
From whom descended, 'tis not ours to say—
That power, no doubt, who furnish'd trees, and plants,
And animals to this vast continent,
Spoke into being man among the rest,—
But what a change is here!—what arts arise!
What towns and capitals! how commerce waves
Her gaudy flags, where silence reign'd before!

Acasto.
Speak, learned Eugenio, for I've heard you tell
The dismal story, and the cause that brought
The first adventurers to these western shores!
The glorious cause that urged our fathers first
To visit climes unknown, and wilder woods
Than e'er Tartarian or Norwegian saw,
And with fair culture to adorn a soil
That never felt industrious swain before.

Eugenio.
All this long story to rehearse, would tire;
Besides, the sun towards the west retreats,
Nor can the noblest theme retard his speed,
Nor loftiest verse—not that which sang the fall
Of Troy divine, and fierce Achilles' ire.—
Yet hear a part:—By persecution wronged,
And sacerdotal rage, our fathers came
From Europe's hostile shores to these abodes,
Here to enjoy a liberty in faith,
Secure from tyranny and base controul.
For this they left their country and their friends,
And plough'd the Atlantic wave in quest of peace;

And found new shores, and sylvan settlements,
And men, alike unknowing and unknown.
Hence, by the care of each adventurous chief
New governments (their wealth unenvied yet)
Were form'd on liberty and virtue's plan.
These searching out uncultivated tracts
Conceived new plans of towns, and capitals,
And spacious provinces—Why should I name
Thee, Penn, the Solon of our western lands;
Sagacious legislator, whom the world
Admires, long dead: an infant colony,
Nursed by thy care, now rises o'er the rest
Like that tall pyramid in Egypt's waste
Oe'r all the neighbouring piles, they also great.
Why should I name those heroes so well known,
Who peopled all the rest of Canada
To Georgia's farthest coasts, West Florida,
Or Apalachian mountains?—Yet what streams
Of blood were shed! what Indian hosts were slain,
Before the days of peace were quite restored!

Leander.
Yes, while they overturn'd the rugged soil
And swept the forests from the shaded plain
'Midst dangers, foes, and death, fierce Indian tribes
With vengeful malice arm'd, and black design,
Oft murdered, or dispersed, these colonies—
Encouraged, too, by Gallia's hostile sons,
A warlike race, who late their arms display'd,
At Quebec, Montreal, and farthest coasts
Of Labrador, or Cape Breton, where now
The British standard awes the subject host.
Here, those brave chiefs, who, lavish of their blood,
Fought in Britannia's cause, in battle fell!—
What heart but mourns the untimely fate of Wolfe,
Who, dying, conquered!—or what breast but beats
To share a fate like his, and die like him!

Acasto.

But why alone commemorate the dead,
And pass those glorious heroes by, who yet
Breathe the same air, and see the light with us?—
The dead, Leander, are but empty names,
And they who fall to-day the same to us
As they who fell ten centuries ago!—
Lost are they all that shined on earth before;
Rome's boldest champions in the dust are laid,
Ajax and great Achilles are no more,
And Philip's warlike son, an empty shade!—
A Washington among our sons of fame
Will rise conspicuous as the morning star
Among the inferior lights—
To distant wilds Virginia sent him forth—
With her brave sons he gallantly opposed
The bold invaders of his country's rights,
Where wild Ohio pours the mazy flood,
And mighty meadows skirt his subject streams.—
But now delighting in his elm tree's shade,
Where deep Potowmac laves the enchanting shore,
He prunes the tender vine, or bids the soil
Luxuriant harvests to the sun displayed.—

Behold a different scene—not thus employed
Were Cortez, and Pizarro, pride of Spain,
Whom blood and murder only satisfied,
And all to glut their avarice and ambition!—

Eugenio.
Such is the curse, Acasto, where the soul
Humane is wanting—but we boast no feats
Of cruelty like Europe's murdering breed—
Our milder epithet is merciful,
And each American, true hearted, learns
To conquer, and to spare; for coward souls
Alone seek vengeance on a vanquished foe.
Gold, fatal gold, was the alluring bait
To Spain's rapacious tribes—hence rose the wars

From Chili to the Caribbean sea,
And Montezuma's Mexican domains:
More blest are we, with whose unenvied soil
Nature decreed no mingling gold to shine,
No flaming diamond, precious emerald,
No blushing sapphire, ruby, chrysolite,
Or jasper red—more noble riches flow
From agriculture, and the industrious swain,
Who tills the fertile vale, or mountain's brow
Content to lead a safe, a humble life,
Among his native hills, romantic shades
Such as the muse of Greece of old did feign,
Allured the Olympian gods from chrystal skies,
Envying such lovely scenes to mortal man.

Leander.

Long has the rural life been justly fam'd,
And bards of old their pleasing pictures drew
Of flowery meads, and groves, and gliding streams:
Hence, old Arcadia—wood-nymphs, satyrs, fauns;
And hence Elysium, fancied heaven below!—
Fair agriculture, not unworthy kings,
Once exercised the royal hand, or those
Whose virtues raised them to the rank of gods.
See old Laertes in his shepherd weeds
Far from his pompous throne and court august,
Digging the grateful soil, where round him rise,
Sons of the earth, the tall aspiring oaks,
Or orchards, boasting of more fertile boughs,
Laden with apples red, sweet scented peach,
Pear, cherry, apricot, or spungy plumb;
While through the glebe the industrious oxen draw
The earth-inverting plough.—Those Romans too,
Fabricius and Camillus, loved a life
Of neat simplicity and rustic bliss,

And from the noisy Forum hastening far,
From busy camps, and sycophants, and crowns,
'Midst woods and fields spent the remains of life,
Where full enjoyment still awaits the wise.

How grateful, to behold the harvests rise,
And mighty crops adorn the extended plains!—
Fair plenty smiles throughout, while lowing herds
Stalk o'er the shrubby hill or grassy mead,
Or at some shallow river slake their thirst.—
The inclosure, now, succeeds the shepherd's care,
Yet milk-white flocks adorn the well stock'd farm,
And court the attention of the industrious swain—
Their fleece rewards him well, and when the winds
Blow with a keener blast, and from the north
Pour mingled tempests through a sunless sky
(Ice, sleet, and rattling hail) secure he sits
Warm in his cottage, fearless of the storm,
Enjoying now the toils of milder moons,
Yet hoping for the spring.—Such are the joys,
And such the toils of those whom heaven hath bless'd
With souls enamoured of a country life.

Acasto.
Such are the visions of the rustic reign—
But this alone, the fountain of support,
Would scarce employ the varying mind of man;
Each seeks employ, and each a different way:
Strip Commerce of her sail, and men once more
Would be converted into savages—
No nation e'er grew social and refined
'Till Commerce first had wing'd the adventurous prow,
Or sent the slow-paced caravan, afar,
To waft their produce to some other clime,
And bring the wished exchange—thus came, of old,
Golconda's golden ore, and thus the wealth
Of Ophir, to the wisest of mankind.

Eugenio.
Great is the praise of Commerce, and the men
Deserve our praise, who spread the undaunted sail,
And traverse every sea—their dangers great,
Death still to combat in the unfeeling gale,
And every billow but a gaping grave:—
There, skies and waters, wearying on the eye,
For weeks and months no other prospect yield
But barren wastes, unfathomed depths, where not
The blissful haunt of human form is seen
To cheer the unsocial horrors of the way—
Yet all these bold designs to Science owe
Their rise and glory—Hail, fair Science! thou,
Transplanted from the eastern skies, dost bloom
In these blest regions—Greece and Rome no more
Detain the Muses on Citheron's brow,
Or old Olympus, crowned with waving woods,
Or Haemus' top, where once was heard the harp,
Sweet Orpheus' harp, that gained his cause below,
And pierced the souls of Orcus and his bride;
That hushed to silence by its voice divine
Thy melancholy waters, and the gales
O Hebrus! that o'er thy sad surface blow.—
No more the maids round Alpheus' waters stray,
Where he with Arethusa's stream doth mix,
Or where swift Tiber disembogues his waves
Into the Italian sea, so long unsung;
Hither they wing their way, the last, the best
Of countries, where the arts shall rise and grow,
And arms shall have their day—even now we boast
A Franklin, prince of all philosophy,
A genius piercing as the electric fire,
Bright as the lightning's flash, explained so well,
By him, the rival of Britannia's sage.
This is the land of every joyous sound,
Of liberty and life, sweet liberty!

Without whose aid the noblest genius fails,
And Science irretrievably must die.

Leander.
But come, Eugenio, since we know the past—
What hinders to pervade with searching eye
The mystic scenes of dark futurity!
Say, shall we ask what empires yet must rise,
What kingdoms, powers and states, where now are seen
Mere dreary wastes and awful solitude,
Where Melancholy sits, with eye forlorn,
And time anticipates, when we shall spread
Dominion from the north, and south, and west,
Far from the Atlantic to Pacific shores,
And people half the convex of the main!—
A glorious theme!—but how shall mortals dare
To pierce the dark events of future years
And scenes unravel, only known to fate?

Acasto.
This might we do, if warmed by that bright coal
Snatch'd from the altar of cherubic fire
Which touched Isaiah's lips—or if the spirit
Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old,
Might swell the heaving breast—I see, I see
Freedom's established reign; cities, and men,
Numerous as sands upon the ocean shore,
And empires rising where the sun descends!—
The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town
Of note; and where the Mississippi stream,
By forests shaded, now runs weeping on,
Nations shall grow, and states not less in fame
Than Greece and Rome of old!—we too shall boast
Our Scipio's, Solon's, Cato's, sages, chiefs
That in the lap of time yet dormant lie,
Waiting the joyous hour of life and light—
O snatch me hence, ye muses, to those days
When, through the veil of dark antiquity,

A race shall hear of us as things remote,
That blossomed in the morn of days—Indeed,
How could I weep that we exist so soon,
Just in the dawning of these mighty times,
Whose scenes are painting for eternity!
Dissentions that shall swell the trump of fame,
And ruin hovering o'er all monarchy!

Eugenio.

Nor shall these angry tumults here subside
Nor murder cease, through all these provinces,
Till foreign crowns have vanished from our view
And dazzle here no more—no more presume
To awe the spirit of fair Liberty—
Vengeance must cut the thread—and Britain, sure
Will curse her fatal obstinacy for it!
Bent on the ruin of this injured country,
She will not listen to our humble prayers,
Though offered with submission:
Like vagabonds and objects of destruction,
Like those whom all mankind are sworn to hate,
She casts us off from her protection,
And will invite the nations round about,
Russians and Germans, slaves and savages,
To come and have a share in our perdition—
O cruel race, O unrelenting Britain,
Who bloody beasts will hire to cut our throats
Who war will wage with prattling innocence,
And basely murder unoffending women!—
Will stab their prisoners when they cry for quarter,
Will burn our towns, and from his lodging turn
The poor inhabitant to sleep in tempests!—
These will be wrongs, indeed, and all sufficient
To kindle up our souls to deeds of horror,
And give to every arm the nerves of Sampson—

These are the men that fill the world with ruin,
And every region mourns their greedy sway,—
Not only for ambition—
But what are this world's goods, that they for them
Should exercise perpetual butchery?
What are these mighty riches we possess,
That they should send so far to plunder them—?—
Already have we felt their potent arm—
And ever since that inauspicious day,
When first Sir Francis Bernard
His ruffians planted at the council door,
And made the assembly room a home for vagrants,
And soldiers, rank and file—e'er since that day
This wretched land, that drinks its children's gore,
Has been a scene of tumult and confusion—!
Are there not evils in the world enough?
Are we so happy that they envy us?
Have we not toiled to satisfy their harpies,
Kings' deputies, that are insatiable;
Whose practice is to incense the royal mind
And make us despicable in his view?—

Have we not all the evils to contend with
That, in this life, mankind are subject to,
Pain, sickness, poverty, and natural death—
But into every wound that nature gave
They will a dagger plunge, and make them mortal!

Leander.
Enough, enough!—such dismal scenes you paint,
I almost shudder at the recollection—
What! are they dogs that they would mangle us?—
Are these the men that come with base design
To rob the hive, and kill the industrious bee!—
To brighter skies I turn my ravished view,
And fairer prospects from the future draw—
Here independent power shall hold her sway,
And public virtue warm the patriot breast:

No traces shall remain of tyranny,
And laws, a pattern to the world beside,
Be here enacted first.—

Acasto.
And when a train of rolling years are past,
(So sung the exiled seer in Patmos isle)
A new Jerusalem, sent down from heaven,
Shall grace our happy earth,—perhaps this land,
Whose ample bosom shall receive, though late,
Myriads of saints, with their immortal king,
To live and reign on earth a thousand years,
Thence called Millennium. Paradise anew
Shall flourish, by no second Adam lost,
No dangerous tree with deadly fruit shall grow,
No tempting serpent to allure the soul
From native innocence.—A Canaan here,
Another Canaan shall excel the old,
And from a fairer Pisgah's top be seen.
No thistle here, nor thorn, nor briar shall spring,
Earth's curse before: the lion and the lamb
In mutual friendship linked, shall browse the shrub,
And timorous deer with softened tygers stray
O'er mead, or lofty hill, or grassy plain;
Another Jordan's stream shall glide along,
And Siloah's brook in circling eddies flow:
Groves shall adorn their verdant banks, on which
The happy people, free from toils and death,
Shall find secure repose. No fierce disease,
No fevers, slow consumption, ghastly plague,
(Fate's ancient ministers) again proclaim
Perpetual war with man: fair fruits shall bloom,
Fair to the eye, and sweeter to the taste;
Nature's loud storms be hushed, and seas no more
Rage hostile to mankind—and, worse than all,
The fiercer passions of the human breast
Shall kindle up to deeds of death no more,
But all subside in universal peace.—

—Such days the world,
And such America at last shall have
When ages, yet to come, have run their round,
And future years of bliss alone remain.

(A. D. 1775)

[w. 1771]

Gen. X, 25.

Hor. Epod. 16.

Hom. Odyss. B. 24.

Newton.

The English massacre at Boston, March 5th, 1770, is here more particularly glanced at.

DISCOVERY.

Six thousand years in these dull regions pass'd
'Tis time, you'll say, we knew their bounds at last,
Knew to what skies our setting suns retire,
And where the wintry suns expend their fire;
What land to land protracts the varied scene,
And what extended oceans roll between;
What worlds exist beneath antarctic skies,
And from Pacific waves what verdant islands rise.

In vain did Nature shore from shore divide:
Art formed a passage and her waves defied:
When his bold plan the master pilot drew
Dissevered worlds stept forward at the view,
And lessening still the intervening space.
Disclosed new millions of the human race.

Proud even of toil, succeeding ages joined
New seas to vanquish, and new worlds to find;
Age following age still farther from the shore,
Found some new wonder that was hid before,
'Till launched at length, with avarice doubly bold,
Their hearts expanding as the world grew old,
Some to be rich, and some to be renowned,
The earth they rifled, and explored it round.

Ambitious Europe! polished in thy pride,
Thine was the art that toil to toil allied
Thine was the gift, to trace each heavenly sphere,
And seize its beams, to serve ambition here:
Hence, fierce Pizarro stock'd a world with graves,
Hence Montezuma left a race of slaves—
Which project suited best with heaven's decree
To force new doctrines, or to leave them free?—

Religion only feigned to claim a share,
Their riches, not their souls, employed your care—

Alas! how few of all that daring train
That seek new worlds embosomed in the main,
How few have sailed on virtue's nobler plan,
How few with motives worthy of a man!—
While through the deep-sea waves we saw them go
Where'er they found a man they made a foe;
Superior only by superior art,
Forgot the social virtues of the heart,
Forgetting still, where'er they madly ran,
That sacred friendship binds mankind to man,
Fond of exerting power untimely shewn,
The momentary triumph all their own!
Met on the wrecks and ravages of time,
They left no native master of their clime,
His trees, his towns, with hardened front they claimed,
Seized every region that a despot named
And forced the oath that bound him to obey
Some prince unknown, ten thousand miles away.

Slaves to their passions, man's imperious race,
Born for contention, find no resting place,
And the vain mind, bewildered and perplext,
Makes this world wretched to enjoy the next.
Tired of the scenes that Nature made their own,
They rove to conquer what remains unknown:
Avarice, undaunted, claims whate'er she sees,
Surmounts earth's circle, and foregoes all ease;
Religion, bolder, sends some sacred chief
To bend the nations to her own belief.
To their vain standard Europe's sons invite,
Who hold no other world can think aright.
Behold their varied tribes, with self applause,
First in religion, liberty, and laws,
And while they bow to cruelty and blood,
Condemn the Indian with his milder god—
Ah, race to justice, truth, and honour blind,
Are thy convictions to convert mankind—!

Vain pride—convince them that your own are just,
Or leave them happy, as you found them first.

What charm is seen through Europe's realms of strife
That adds new blessings to the savage life?—
On them warm suns with equal splendour shine,
Their each domestic pleasure equals thine,
Their native groves as soft a bloom display,
As self-contented roll their lives away,
And the gay soul, in fancy's visions blest,
Leaves to the care of chance her heaven of rest.—

What are the arts that rise on Europe's plan
But arts destructive to the bliss of man?
What are all wars, where'er the marks you trace,
But the sad records of our world's disgrace?
Reason degraded from her tottering throne,
And precepts, called divine, observed by none.

Blest in their distance from that bloody scene,
Why spread the sail to pass the gulphs between?—
If winds can waft to ocean's utmost verge,
And there new islands and new worlds emerge—
If wealth, or war, or science bid thee roam,
Ah, leave religion and thy laws at home,
Leave the free native to enjoy his store,
Nor teach destructive arts, unknown before—
Woes of their own those new found worlds invade,
There, too, fierce passions the weak soul degrade,
Invention there has winged the unerring dart,
There the swift arrow vibrates to the heart,
Revenge and death contending bosoms share,
And pining envy claims her subjects there.—
Are these too few?—then see despotic power
Spends on a throne of logs her busy hour.
Hard by, and half ambitious to ascend,
Priests, interceding with the gods, attend—
Atoning victims at their shrines they lay,
Their crimson knives tremendous rites display,
Or the proud despot's gore remorseless shed,
Through life detested, or adored when dead.

Born to be wretched, search this globe around,
Dupes to a few the race of man is found!
Seek some new world in some new climate plac'd,
Some gay Ta-ia on the watery waste,
Though Nature clothes in all her bright array,
Some proud tormentor steals her charms away:
Howe'er she smiles beneath those milder skies,
Though men decay the monarch never dies!
Howe'er the groves, howe'er the gardens bloom,
A monarch and a priest is still their doom!

[w. 1772]

1786

Commonly called Otaheite, an Island in the Southern Pacific Ocean, noted for the natural civilization of its inhabitants.

A POLITICAL LITANY.

Libera Nos, Domine.—DELIVER US O LORD, not only from British Dependence, but also,

From a junto that labour with absolute power,
Whose schemes disappointed have made them look sour,
From the lords of the council, who fight against freedom,
Who still follow on where delusion shall lead them.

From the group at St. James's, who slight our petitions,
And fools that are waiting for further submissions—
From a nation whose manners are rough and severe,
From scoundrels and rascals,—do keep us all clear.

From pirates sent out by command of the king
To murder and plunder, but never to swing;
From Wallace and Greaves, and Vipers and Roses,
Who, if heaven pleases, we'll give bloody noses.

From the valiant Dunmore, with his crew of banditti,
Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city,

From hot-headed Montague, mighty to swear,
The little fat man, with his pretty white hair.

From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown,
From slaves, that would die for a smile from the throne,
From assemblies that vote against Congress proceedings,
(Who now see the fruit of their stupid misleadings.)

From Tryon the mighty, who flies from our city,
And swelled with importance disdains the committee:
(But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes,
What the devil care we where the devil he goes.)

From the caitiff, lord North, who would bind us in chains,
From a royal king Log, with his tooth-full of brains,
Who dreams, and is certain (when taking a nap)
He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map.

From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears,
We send up to heaven our wishes and prayers
That we, disunited, may freemen be still,
And Britain go on—to be damned if she will.

New York, June 1775

1775

Captains and ships in the British navy, then employed on the American coast.

TO THE AMERICANS,

On the Rumoured Approach of the Hessian Forces, Waldeckers, &c. (Published 1775)

The blast of death! the infernal guns prepare—
“Rise with the storm and all its dangers share.”

[_]

Occasioned by General Gage's Proclamation that the Provinces were in a state of Rebellion, and out of the King's protection.

Rebels you are—the British champion cries—
Truth, stand thou forth!—and tell the wretch, He lies:—
Rebels!—and see this mock imperial lord

Already threats these rebels with the CORD.

The hour draws nigh, the glass is almost run,
When truth will shine, and ruffians be undone;
When this base miscreant will forbear to sneer,
And curse his taunts and bitter insults, here.

If to controul the cunning of a knave,
Freedom respect, and scorn the name of SLAVE;
If to protest against a tyrant's laws,
And arm for vengeance in a righteous cause,
Be deemed REBELLION—'tis a harmless thing:
This bug-bear name, like death, has lost its sting.

AMERICANS! at freedom's fane adore!
But trust to Britain, and her flag, no more;
The generous genius of their isle has fled,
And left a mere impostor in his stead.

If conquered, rebels (their Scotch records show)
Receive no mercy from the parent foe;
Nay, even the grave, that friendly haunt of peace,
(Where Nature gives the woes of man to cease,)
Vengeance will search—and buried corpses there
Be raised, to feast the vultures of the air—
Be hanged on gibbets!—such a war they wage—
Such are the devils that swell our souls with rage!—

If Britain conquers, help us, heavens, to fly:
Lend us your wings, ye ravens of the sky;—
If Britain conquers—we exist no more;
These lands will redden with their children's gore,
Who, turned to slaves, their fruitless toils will moan,
Toils in these fields that once they called their own!

To arms! to arms! and let the murdering sword
Decide, who best deserves the HANGMAN'S CORD:
Nor think the hills of Canada too bleak
When desperate Freedom is the prize you seek;
For that, the call of honour bids you go

O'er frozen lakes and mountains wrapt in snow:
No toils should daunt the nervous and the bold,
They scorn all heat or wave-congealing cold.—

Haste!—to your tents in iron fetters bring
These SLAVES, that serve a tyrant, and a king;
So just, so virtuous is your cause, I say,
Hell must prevail, if Britain gains the day.

1775

See, in the records of American History, about this time, a letter from Gen. Gage to Gen. Washington; with the answer of the latter.

After the battle of Colloden: See Smollett's History of England 1745.

ON A HESSIAN DEBARKATION. 1776.

There is a book, tho' not a book of rhymes,
Where truth severe records a nation's crimes;—
To check such monarchs as with brutal might
Wanton in blood, and trample on the right.

Rejoice, O Death!—Britannia's tyrant sends
From German plains his myriads to our shore;
The Caledonian with the English joined:—
Bring them, ye winds, but waft them back no more.

To these far climes with stately step they come,
Resolved all prayers, all prowess to defy;
Smit with the love of countries not their own,
They come, indeed, to conquer—not to die.

In the slow breeze (I hear their funeral song,)
The dance of ghosts the infernal tribes prepare:
To hell's dark mansions haste, ye abandoned throng,
Drinking from German sculls old Odin's beer.

From dire Cesarea, forced, these slaves of kings,
Quick, let them take their way on eagle's wings:
To thy strong posts, Manhattan's isle, repair,
To meet the vengeance that awaits them there!—

[w. 1776]

1795

The old Roman name of Jersey.

AMERICA INDEPENDENT;

And Her Everlasting Deliverance from British Tyranny and Oppression.

[_]

First published in Philadelphia, by Mr. Robert Bell, in 1778.

To him who would relate the story right,
A mind supreme should dictate, or indite.—
Yes!—justly to record the tale of fame,
A muse from heaven should touch the soul with flame,
Some powerful spirit, in superior lays,
Should tell the conflicts of these stormy days!

'Tis done! and Britain for her madness sighs—
Take warning, tyrants, and henceforth be wise,
If o'er mankind man gives you regal sway,
Take not the rights of human kind away.

When God from chaos gave this world to be,
Man then he formed, and formed him to be free,
In his own image stampt the favourite race—
How darest thou, tyrant, the fair stamp deface!
When on mankind you fix your abject chains,
No more the image of that God remains;
O'er a dark scene a darker shade is drawn,
His work dishonoured, and our glory gone!

When first Britannia sent her hostile crew
To these far shores, to ravage and subdue,
We thought them gods, and almost seemed to say
No ball could pierce them, and no dagger slay—
Heavens! what a blunder—half our fears were vain;
These hostile gods at length have quit the plain,
On neighbouring isles the storm of war they shun,
Happy, thrice happy, if not quite undone.—

Yet soon, in dread of some impending woe,
Even from these islands shall these ruffians go—
This be their doom, in vengeance for the slain,
To pass their days in poverty and pain;

For such base triumphs, be it still their lot
To triumph only o'er the rebel Scot,
And to their insect isle henceforth confined
No longer lord it o'er the human kind.—

But, by the fates, who still prolong their stay,
And gather vengeance to conclude their day,
Yet, ere they go, the angry Muse shall tell
The treasured woes that in her bosom swell:—

Proud, fierce, and bold, O Jove! who would not laugh
To see these bullies worshipping a calf:
But they are slaves who spurn at Reason's rules;
And men once slaves, are soon transformed to fools.—

To recommend what monarchies have done,
They bring, for witness, David and his son;
How one was brave, the other just and wise,
And hence our plain Republics they despise;
But mark how oft, to gratify their pride,
The people suffered, and the people died;
Though one was wise, and one Goliah slew,
Kings are the choicest curse that man e'er knew!

Hail, worthy Briton!—how enlarged your fame;
How great your glory, terrible your name;
“Queen of the isles, and empress of the main,”—
Heaven grant you all these mighty things again;
But first insure the gaping crowd below
That you less cruel, and more just may grow:
If fate, vindictive for the sins of man,
Had favour shewn to your infernal plan,
How would your nation have exulted here,
And scorned the widow's sigh, the orphan's tear!
How had your prince, of all bad men the worst,
Laid worth and virtue prostrate in the dust!
A second Sawney had he shone to-day,
A world subdued, and murder but his play;
How had that prince, contemning right or law,
Glutted with blood his foul, voracious maw:

In him we see the depths of baseness joined,
Whate'er disgraced the dregs of human kind;
Cain, Nimrod, Nero—fiends in human guise,
Herod, Domitian—these in judgment rise,
And, envious of his deeds, I hear them say
None but a GEORGE could be more vile than they.

Swoln though he was with wealth, revenge, and pride,
How could he dream that heaven was on his side—
Did he not see, when so decreed by fate,
They placed the crown upon his royal pate,
Did he not see the richest jewel fall—
Dire was the omen, and astonished all—

That gem no more shall brighten and adorn;
No more that gem by British kings be worn,
Or swell to wonted heights of fair renown
The fading glories of their boasted crown.

Yet he to arms, and war, and blood inclined,
(A fair-day warrior with a feeble mind,
Fearless, while others meet the shock of fate,
And dare that death, which clips his thread too late,)
He to the fane (O hypocrite!) did go,
While not an angel there but was his foe,
There did he kneel, and sigh, and sob, and pray,
Yet not to lave his thousand sins away,
Far other motives swayed his spotted soul;
'Twas not for those the secret sorrow stole
Down his pale cheek—'twas vengeance and despair
Dissolved his eye, and planted sorrow there—
How could he hope to bribe the impartial sky
By his base prayers, and mean hypocrisy—
Heaven still is just, and still abhors all crimes,
Not acts like George, the Nero of our times—
What were his prayers—his prayers could be no more
Than a thief's wishes to recruit his store:—
Such prayers could never reach the worlds above;
They were but curses in the ear of Jove;—

You prayed that conquest might your arms attend,
And crush that freedom virtue did defend,
That the fierce Indian, rousing from his rest,
Might these new regions with his flames invest,
With scalps and tortures aggravate our woe,
And to the infernal world dismiss your foe.

No mines of gold our fertile country yields,
But mighty harvests crown the loaded fields,
Hence, trading far, we gained the golden prize,
Which, though our own, bewitched their greedy eyes—
For that they ravaged India's climes before,
And carried death to Asia's utmost shore—
Clive was your envied slave, in avarice bold—
He mowed down nations for his dearer gold;
The fatal gold could give no true content,
He mourned his murders, and to Tophet went.

Led on by lust of lucre and renown,
Burgoyne came marching with his thousands down,
High were his thoughts, and furious his career,
Puffed with self confidence, and pride severe,
Swoln with the idea of his future deeds,
Onward to ruin each advantage leads:
Before his hosts his heaviest curses flew,
And conquered worlds rose hourly to his view:
His wrath, like Jove's, could bear with no controul,
His words bespoke the mischief in his soul;
To fight was not this general's only trade,
He shined in writing, and his wit displayed—
To awe the more with titles of command
He told of forts he ruled in Scottish land;—
Queen's colonel as he was, he did not know
That thorns and thistles, mixed with honours, grow;
In Britain's senate, though he held a place,
All did not save him from one long disgrace,
One stroke of fortune that convinced them all
That men could conquer, and lieutenants fall.

Foe to the rights of man, proud plunderer, say
Had conquest crowned you on that mighty day

When you, to Gates, with sorrow, rage, and shame
Resigned your conquests, honours, arms, and fame,
When at his feet Britannia's wreathes you threw,
And the sun sickened at a sight so new;
Had you been victor—what a waste of woe!
What souls had vanished to where souls do go!
What dire distress had marked your fatal way,
What deaths on deaths disgraced that dismal day!

Can laurels flourish in a soil of blood,
Or on those laurels can fair honours bud—
Cursed be that wretch who murder makes his trade,
Cursed be all wars that e'er ambition made!

What murdering tory now relieves your grief,
Or plans new conquests for his favourite chief;
Designs still dark employ that ruffian race,
Beasts of your choosing, and our own disgrace,
So vile a crew the world ne'er saw before,
And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more:
If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air,
Those ghosts have entered their base bodies here
Murder and blood is still their dear delight—
Scream round their roofs, ye ravens of the night!
Whene'er they wed, may demons and despair,
And grief and woe, and blackest night be there;
Fiends leagued from hell the nuptial lamp display,
Swift to perdition light them on their way,
Round the wide world their devilish squadrons chace,
To find no realm, that grants one resting place.

Far to the north, on Scotland's utmost end
An isle there lies, the haunt of every fiend,
No shepherds there attend their bleating flocks
But withered witches rove among the rocks;
Shrouded in ice, the blasted mountains shew
Their cloven heads, to daunt the seas below;
The lamp of heaven in his diurnal race
There scarcely deigns to unveil his radiant face,
Or if one day he circling treads the sky
He views this island with an angry eye,

Or ambient fogs their broad, moist wings expand
Damp his bright ray, and cloud the infernal land;
The blackening winds incessant storms prolong,
Dull as their night, and dreary as my song;
When stormy winds and gales refuse to blow,
Then from the dark sky drives the unpitying snow;
When drifting snows from iron clouds forbear,
Then down the hail-stones rattle through the air—
There screeching owls, and screaming vultures rest
And not a tree adorns its barren breast;
No peace, no rest the elements bestow,
But seas forever rage, and storms forever blow.

There, LOYALS, there, with loyal hearts retire,
There pitch your tents, and kindle there your fire;
There desert Nature will her stings display,
And fiercest hunger on your vitals prey,
And with yourselves let John Burgoyne retire
To reign the monarch, whom your hearts admire.

Britain, at last to arrest your lawless hand,
Rises the genius of a generous land,
Our injured rights bright Gallia's prince defends,
And from this hour that prince and we are friends,
Feuds, long upheld, are vanished from our view.
Once we were foes—but for the sake of you—
Britain, aspiring Briton, now must bend—
Can she at once with France and us contend,
When we alone, remote from foreign aid,
Her armies captured, and distressed her trade—
Britain and we no more in combat join,
No more, as once, in every sea combine;
Dead is that friendship which did mutual burn,
Fled is the sceptre, never to return;
By sea and land, perpetual foes we meet,
Our cause more honest, and our hearts as great;
Lost are these regions to Britannia's reign,
Nor need these strangers of their loss complain,
Since all, that here with greedy eyes they view,
From our own toil, to wealth and empire grew:—

Our hearts are ravished from our former queen
Far as the ocean God hath placed between,
They strive in vain to join this mighty mass,
Torn by convulsions from its native place.
As well might men to flaming Hecla join
The huge high Alps, or towering Appenine;
In vain they send their half-commissioned tribe,
And whom they cannot conquer, strive to bribe;
Their pride and madness burst our union chain,
Nor shall the unwieldy mass unite again.

Nor think that France sustains our cause alone;
With gratitude her helping hand we own,
But hear, ye nations—Truth herself can say
We bore the heat and danger of the day:
She calmly viewed the tumult from afar,
We braved each insult, and sustained the war:
Oft drove the foe, or forced their hosts to yield.
Or left them, more than once, a dear bought field—
'Twas then, at last, on Jersey plains distrest,
We swore to seek the mountains of the west,
There a free empire for our seed obtain,
A terror to the slaves that might remain.

Peace you demand, and vainly wish to find
Old leagues renewed, and strength once more combined—
Yet shall not all your base dissembling art
Deceive the tortures of a bleeding heart—
Yet shall not all your mingled prayers that rise
Wash out your crimes, or bribe the avenging skies;
Full many a corpse lies mouldering on the plain
That ne'er shall see its little brood again:
See, yonder lies, all breathless, cold, and pale,
Drenched in her gore, Lavinia of the vale;
The cruel Indian seized her life away,
As the next morn began her bridal day!—
This deed alone our just revenge would claim,
Did not ten thousand more your sons defame.

Returned, a captive, to my native shore,
How changed I find those scenes that pleased before!
How changed those groves where fancy loved to stray,
When spring's young blossoms bloom'd along the way;
From every eye distils the frequent tear,
From every mouth some doleful tale I hear!
Some mourn a father, brother, husband, friend:
Some mourn, imprisoned in their native land,
In sickly ships what numerous hosts confined
At once their lives and liberties resigned:
In dreary dungeons woeful scenes have passed,
Long in the historian's page the tale will last,
As long as spring renews the flowery wood,
As long as breezes curl the yielding flood!—
Some sent to India's sickly climes afar,
To dig, with slaves, for buried diamonds there,
There left to sicken in a land of woe
Where o'er scorched hills infernal breezes blow,
Whose every blast some dire contagion brings,
Fevers or death on its destructive wings,
'Till fate relenting, its last arrows drew,
Brought death to them, and infamy to you.

Pests of mankind! remembrance shall recall
And paint these horrors to the view of all;
Heaven has not turned to its own works a foe
Nor left to monsters these fair realms below,
Else had your arms more wasteful vengeance spread,
And these gay plains been dyed a deeper red.—

O'er Britain's isle a thousand woes impend,
Too weak to conquer, govern, or defend,
To liberty she holds pretended claim—
The substance we enjoy, and they the name;
Her prince, surrounded by a host of slaves,
Still claims dominion o'er the vagrant waves:
Such be his claims o'er all the world beside,—
An empty nothing—madness, rage and pride.

From Europe's realms fair freedom has retired,
And even in Britain has the spark expired—

Sigh for the change your haughty empire feels,
Sigh for the doom that no disguise conceals!
Freedom no more shall Albion's cliffs survey;
Corruption there has centered all her sway,
Freedom disdains her honest head to rear,
Or herd with nobles, kings, or princes there;
She shuns their gilded spires and domes of state,
Resolved, O Virtue, at thy shrine to wait:
'Midst savage woods and wilds she dares to stray,
And bids uncultured nature bloom more gay.

She is that glorious and immortal sun,
Without whose ray this world would be undone,
A mere dull chaos, sunk in deepest night,
An abject something, void of form and light,
Of reptiles, worst in rank, the dire abode,
Perpetual mischief, and the dragon's brood.

Let Turks and Russians glut their fields with blood,
Again let Britain dye the Atlantic flood,
Let all the east adore the sanguine wreathe
And gain new glories from the trade of death—
America! the works of peace be thine,
Thus shalt thou gain a triumph more divine—
To thee belongs a second golden reign,
Thine is the empire o'er a peaceful main;
Protect the rights of human kind below
Crush the proud tyrant who becomes their foe,
And future times shall own your struggles blest,
And future years enjoy perpetual rest.

American! revenge your country's wrongs;
To you the honour of this deed belongs,
Your arms did once this sinking land sustain,
And saved those climes where Freedom yet must reign—
Your bleeding soil this ardent task demands,
Expel yon' thieves from these polluted lands,
Expect no peace till haughty Britain yields,
'Till humbled Britons quit your ravaged fields—
Still to the charge that routed foe returns,
The war still rages, and the battle burns—

No dull debates, or tedious counsels know,
But rush at once, embodied, on your foe;
With hell-born spite a seven years war they wage,
The pirate Goodrich, and the ruffian Gage,
Your injured country groans while yet they stay,
Attend her groans, and force their hosts away;
Your mighty wrongs the tragic muse shall trace,
Your gallant deeds shall fire a future race;
To you may kings and potentates appeal,
You may the doom of jarring nations seal;
A glorious empire rises, bright and new!
Firm be the structure, and must rest on you!
Fame o'er the mighty pile expands her wings,
Remote from princes, bishops, lords, and kings,
Those fancied gods, who, famed through every shore,
Mankind have fashioned, and like fools, adore.—
Here yet shall heaven the joys of peace bestow,
While through our soil the streams of plenty flow,
And o'er the main we spread the trading sail,
Wafting the produce of the rural vale.

Alexander THE GREAT.

A real event of that day: see REMEMBRANCER of 1777.—

Miss M'Crea. See histories of the revolutionary war.

[w. 1778]

On the new AMERICAN FRIGATE ALLIANCE.

AS Neptune traced the azure main
That owned, so late, proud Britain's reign,
A floating pile approached his car,
The scene of terror and of war.

As nearer still the monarch drew
(Her starry flag displayed to view)
He asked a Triton of his train
“What flag was this that rode the main?

“A ship of such a gallant mien
“This many a day I have not seen,

“To no mean power can she belong,
“So swift, so warlike, stout, and strong.

“See, how she mounts the foaming wave—
“Where other ships would find a grave,
“Majestic, aweful, and serene,
“She sails the ocean, like its queen.—

“Great monarch of the hoary deep,
“Whose trident awes the waves to sleep,
(Replied a Triton of his train)
“This ship, that stems the western main,

“To those new, rising States belongs,
“Who, in resentment of their wrongs,
“Oppose proud Britain's tyrant sway,
“And combat her, by land and sea.

“This pile, of such superior fame,
“From their strict union takes her name,
“For them she cleaves the briny tide,
“While terror marches by her side.

“When she unfurls her flowing sails,
“Undaunted by the fiercest gales,
“In dreadful pomp she ploughs the main,
“While adverse tempests rage in vain.

“When she displays her gloomy tier,
“The boldest foes congeal with fear,
“And, owning her superior might,
“Seek their best safety in their flight.

“But when she pours the dreadful blaze,
“And thunder from her cannon plays,
“The bursting flash, that wings the ball,
“Compells those foes to strike, or fall.

“Though she, with her triumphant crew,
“Might to their fate all foes pursue;
“Yet, faithful to the land that bore,
“She stays, to guard her native shore.

“Though she might make the cruisers groan
“That sail within the torrid zone,
“She kindly lends a nearer aid,
“Annoys them here, and guards the trade.

“Now, traversing the eastern main,
“She greets the shores of France and Spain;
“Her gallant flag, displayed to view,
“Invites the old world to the new.

“This task atchieved, behold her go
“To seas congealed with ice and snow,
“To either tropic, and the line,
“Where suns with endless fervour shine.

“Not, Argo, on thy decks were found
“Such hearts of brass, as here abound;
“They for their golden fleece did fly,
“These sail—to vanquish tyranny.”—

(1778)

1786

On the Death OF CAPTAIN NICHOLAS BIDDLE,

COMMANDER OF THE RANDOLPH FRIGATE, BLOWN UP NEAR BARBADOES, 1776.

What distant thunders rend the skies,
What clouds of smoke in columns rise,
What means this dreadful roar?
Is from his base Vesuvius thrown,
Is sky-topt Atlas tumbled down,
Or Etna's self no more!

Shock after shock torments my ear;
And lo!—two hostile ships appear,
Red lightnings round them glow:
The Yarmouth boasts of sixty-four,
The Randolph thirty-two—no more—
And will she fight this foe!

The Randolph soon on Stygian streams
Shall coast along the land of dreams,
The islands of the dead!
But Fate, that parts them on the deep,
May save the Briton yet to weep
His days of victory fled.

Say, who commands that dismal blaze,
Where yonder starry streamer plays?
Does Mars with Jove engage!
'Tis Biddle wings those angry fires,
Biddle, whose bosom Jove inspires,
With more than mortal rage.

Tremendous flash!—and hark, the ball
Drives through old Yarmouth, flames and all;
Her bravest sons expire;
Did Mars himself approach so nigh,
Even Mars, without disgrace, might fly
The Randolph's fiercer fire.

The Briton views his mangled crew,
“And shall we strike to thirty-two?—
(Said Hector, stained with gore)
“Shall Britain's flag to these descend—
“Rise, and the glorious conflict end,
“Britons, I ask no more!”

He spoke—they charged their cannon round,
Again the vaulted heavens resound,
The Randolph bore it all,

Then fixed her pointed cannons true—
Away the unwieldly vengeance flew;
Britons, the warriors fall.

The Yarmouth saw, with dire dismay,
Her wounded hull, shrouds shot away,
Her boldest heroes dead—
She saw amidst her floating slain
The conquering Randolph stem the main—
She saw, she turned—and fled!

That hour, blest chief, had she been thine,
Dear Biddle, had the powers divine
Been kind as thou were brave;
But Fate, who doomed thee to expire,
Prepared an arrow, tipt with fire,
And marked a watery grave,

And in that hour, when conquest came,
Winged at his ship a pointed flame,
That not even he could shun—
The battle ceased, the Yarmouth fled,
The bursting Randolph ruin spread,
And left her task undone!

1781

GEORGE THE THIRD'S SOLILOQUY.

What mean these dreams, and hideous forms that rise
Night after night, tormenting to my eyes—
No real foes these horrid shapes can be,
But thrice as much they vex and torture me.

How cursed is he—how doubly cursed am I—
Who lives in pain, and yet who dares not die;
To him no joy this world of Nature brings,
In vain the wild rose blooms, the daisy springs.
Is this a prelude to some new disgrace,
Some baleful omen to my name and race!—

It may be so—ere mighty Caesar died
Presaging Nature felt his doom, and sighed;
A bellowing voice through midnight groves was heard,
And threatening ghosts at dusk of eve appeared—
Ere Brutus fell, to adverse fates a prey,
His evil genius met him on the way,
And so may mine!—but who would yield so soon
A prize, some luckier hour may make my own?
Shame seize my crown ere such a deed be mine—
No—to the last my squadrons shall combine,
And slay my foes, while foes remain to slay,
Or heaven shall grant me one successful day.

Is there a robber close in Newgate hemmed,
Is there a cut-throat, fettered and condemned?
Haste, loyal slaves, to George's standard come,
Attend his lectures when you hear the drum;
Your chains I break—for better days prepare,
Come out, my friends, from prison and from care,
Far to the west I plan your desperate sway,
There 'tis no sin to ravage, burn, and slay.
There, without fear, your bloody aims pursue,
And shew mankind what English thieves can do.

That day, when first I mounted to the throne,
I swore to let all foreign foes alone.
Through love of peace to terms did I advance,
And made, they say, a shameful league with France.
But different scenes rise horrid to my view,
I charged my hosts to plunder and subdue—
At first, indeed, I thought short wars to wage
And sent some jail-birds to be led by Gage,
For 'twas but right, that those we marked for slaves
Should be reduced by cowards, fools, and knaves;
Awhile directed by his feeble hand,
Whose troops were kicked and pelted through the land,
Or starved in Boston, cursed the unlucky hour
They left their dungeons for that fatal shore.

France aids them now, a desperate game I play,
And hostile Spain will do the same, they say;

My armies vanquished, and my heroes fled,
My people murmuring, and my commerce dead,
My shattered navy pelted, bruised, and clubbed,
By Dutchmen bullied, and by Frenchmen drubbed,
My name abhorred, my nation in disgrace,
How should I act in such a mournful case!
My hopes and joys are vanished with my coin,
My ruined army, and my lost Burgoyne!
What shall I do—confess my labours vain,
Or whet my tusks, and to the charge again!
But where's my force—my choicest troops are fled,
Some thousands crippled, and a myriad dead—
If I were owned the boldest of mankind,
And hell with all her flames inspired my mind,
Could I at once with Spain and France contend,
And fight the rebels on the world's green end?—
The pangs of parting I can ne'er endure,
Yet part we must, and part to meet no more!
Oh! blast this Congress, blast each upstart STATE,
On whose commands ten thousand captains wait;
From various climes that dire Assembly came,
True to their trust, as hostile to my fame,
'Tis these, ah these, have ruined half my sway,
Disgraced my arms, and led my slaves astray—
Cursed be the day, when first I saw the sun,
Cursed be the hour, when I these wars begun:
The fiends of darkness then possessed my mind,
And powers unfriendly to the human kind.
To wasting grief, and sullen rage a prey,
To Scotland's utmost verge I'll take my way,
There with eternal storms due concert keep
And while the billows rage, as fiercely weep—
Ye highland lads, my rugged fate bemoan,
Assist me with one sympathizing groan,
For late I find the nations are my foes,
I must submit, and that with bloody nose,
Or, like our James, fly basely from the state,
Or share, what still is worse—old Charles's fate.

1779

THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP

Written 1780.

CANTO I. The CAPTURE.

Assist me, CLIO! while in verse I tell
The dire misfortunes that a ship befell,
Which outward bound, to St. Eustatia's shore,
Death and disaster through the billows bore.

FROM Philadelphia's crowded port she came;
For there the builder plann'd her lofty frame,
With wond'rous skill, and excellence of art
He form'd, dispos'd, and order'd every part,
With joy beheld the stately fabric rise
To a stout bulwark of stupendous size,
'Till launch'd at last, capacious of the freight,
He left her to the Pilots, and her fate.

FIRST from her depths the tapering masts ascend,
On whose firm bulk the transverse yards depend,
By shrouds and stays secur'd from side to side
Trees grew on trees, suspended o'er the tide,
Firm to the yards extended, broad and vast
They hung the sails susceptive of the blast,
Far o'er the prow the lengthy bowsprit lay,
Supporting on the extreme the taught Gib-stay,
Twice ten six pounders at their port holes plac'd
And rang'd in rows, stood hostile in the waist:
Thus all prepar'd, impatient for the seas,
She left her station with no adverse breeze,
This her first outset from her native shore,
To sea a stranger, and untry'd before.

FROM the bright radiance that his glories spread
Ere from the east gay Phoebus lifts his head,
From the sweet morn, a kindred name she won,
AURORA call'd, the offspring of the sun,

Whose form projecting, the broad prow displays,
Far glittering o'er the wave, a mimic blaze.

THE gay ship now, in all her pomp and pride,
With sails expanded, flew along the tide;
'Twas thy deep stream, O Delaware, that bore
This pile intended for a southern shore,
(Bound to those isles where endless summer reigns,
Fair fruits, gay blossoms, and enamell'd plains;
Where sloping lawns the roving swain invite,
And the cool morn succeeds the breezy night,
Where each glad day a heaven unclouded brings
And sky-topt mountains teem with golden springs.)

FROM Cape HENLOPEN, urg'd by favouring gales,
When morn emerg'd, we sea-ward spread our sails,
Then east-south-east explor'd the briny way,
Close to the wind, departing from the bay;
No longer seen the hoarse resounding strand,
With hearts elate we hurried from the land,
Escap'd the dangers of that shelvy ground
To sailors fatal, and for wrecks renown'd—

THE gale increases as we stem the main,
Now scarce the hills their sky-blue mist retain,
At last they sink beneath the rolling wave
That seems their summits, as they sink, to lave;
Abaft the beam the freshening breezes play,
No mists advancing to deform the day,
No tempests rising o'er the splendid scene,
A sea unruffled, and a heaven serene.

NOW Sol's bright lamp, the heav'n born source of light,
Had pass'd the line of his meridian height,
And westward hung—retreating from the view
Shores disappear'd, and every hill withdrew,
When, still suspicious of some neighbouring foe,
Aloft the Master bade a Seaman go,
To mark if, from the mast's aspiring height
Through all the round a vessel came in sight.

Too soon the Seaman's glance, extending wide
Far distant in the east a ship espy'd,

Her lofty masts stood bending to the gale,
Close to the wind was brac'd each shivering sail;
Next from the deck we saw the approaching foe,
Her spangled bottom seem'd in flames to glow
When to the winds she bow'd in dreadful haste
And her lee-guns lay delug'd in the waste;
From her top-gallant flow'd an English Jack;
With all her might she strove to gain our track,
Nor strove in vain—with pride and power elate
Wing'd on by hell, she drove us to our fate,
No stop, no stay her bloody crew intends,
(So flies a comet with its host of fiends)
Nor oaths, nor prayers arrest her swift career,
Death in her front, and ruin in her rear.

STRUCK at the sight, the Master gave command
To change our course, and steer toward the land—
Swift to the task the ready sailors run,
And while the word was utter'd, half was done;
As from the south the fiercer breezes rise
Swift from her foe alarm'd AURORA flies,
With every sail extended to the wind
She fled the unequal foe that chac'd behind;
Along her decks dispos'd in close array
Each at its port, the grim artillery lay,
Soon on the foe with brazen throat to roar;
But, small their size, and narrow was their bore;
Yet faithful they their destin'd station keep
To guard the barque that wafts them o'er the deep,
Who now must bend to steer a homeward course
And trust her swiftness rather than her force,
Unfit to combat with a powerful foe;
Her decks too open, and her waist too low.

WHILE o'er the wave with foaming prow she flies,
Once more emerging, distant landscapes rise;
High in the air the starry streamer plays,
And every sail its various tribute pays:
To gain the land we bore the weighty blast:
And now the wish'd for cape appear'd at last;

But the vext foe, impatient of delay,
Prepar'd for ruin, press'd upon her prey;
Near, and more near, in aweful grandeur came
The frigate IRIS, not unknown to fame;
IRIS her name, but HANCOCK once she bore,
Fram'd, and completed on NEW ALBION'S shore,
By MANLY lost, the swiftest of the train
That fly with wings of canvas o'er the main.

Now, while for combat some with zeal prepare,
Thus to the heavens the Boatswain sent his prayer;
“Lift' all ye powers that rule the skies and seas!
“Shower down perdition on such thieves as these,
“Fate strike their hearts with terror and dismay,
“And sprinkle on their powder salt-sea spray!
“May bursting cannon, while his aim he tries,
“Destroy the Gunner, and be-damn his eyes—
“The chief who awes the quarter-deck, may he
“Tripp'd from his stand, be tumbled in the sea.
“May they who rule the round-top's giddy height
“Be canted headlong to perpetual night;
“May fiends torment them on a leeward coast,
“And help forsake them when they want it most—
“From their wheel'd engines torn be every gun—
“And now, to sum up every curse in one,
“May latent flames, to save us, intervene,
“And hell-ward drive them from their magazine!”—

THE Frigate, now, had every sail unfurl'd,
And rush'd tremendous o'er the wat'ry world;
Thus fierce Pelides, eager to destroy,
Chac'd the proud Trojan to the gates of Troy—
Swift o'er the waves while hostile they pursue
As swiftly from their fangs AURORA flew,
At length HENLOPEN'S cape we gain'd once more,
And vainly strove to force the ship ashore;
Stern fate forbade the barren shore to gain,
Denial sad, and source of future pain!
For then the inspiring breezes ceas'd to blow,
Lost were they all, and smooth the seas below;

By the broad cape becalm'd, our lifeless sails
No longer swell'd their bosoms to the gales;
The ship, unable to pursue her way,
Tumbling about, at her own guidance lay,
No more the helm its wonted influence lends,
No oars assist us, and no breeze befriends;
Mean time the foe, advancing from the sea,
Rang'd her black cannon, pointed on our lee,
Then up she luff'd, and blaz'd her entrails dire,
Bearing destruction, terror, death, and fire.

VEXT at our fate, we prim'd a piece, and then
Return'd the shot, to shew them we were men.
Dull night at length her dusky pinions spread,
And every hope to 'scape the foe was fled,
Close to thy cape, Henlopen, though we press'd,
We could not gain thy desert, dreary breast;
Though ruin'd trees beshroud thy barren shore
With mounds of sand half hid, or cover'd o'er,
Though ruffian winds disturb thy summit bare,
Yet every hope and every wish was there,
In vain we sought to reach the joyless strand,
Fate stood between, and barr'd us from the land.

ALL dead becalm'd, and helpless as we lay,
The ebbing current forc'd us back to sea,
While vengeful IRIS, thirsting for our blood,
Flash'd her red lightnings o'er the trembling flood,
At every flash a storm of ruin came
'Till our shock'd vessel shook through all her frame—
Mad for revenge, our breasts with fury glow
To wreak returns of vengeance on the foe;
Full at his hull our pointed guns we rais'd,
His hull resounded as the cannon blaz'd;
Through his main-top sail one a passage tore,
His sides re-echo'd to the dreadful roar,
Alternate fires dispell'd the shades of night—
But how unequal was this daring fight!
Our stoutest guns threw but a six-pound ball,
Twelve pounders from the foe our sides did maul,

And, while no power to save him intervenes,
A bullet struck our captain of Marines;
Fierce, though he bid defiance to the foe
He felt his death and ruin in the blow,
Headlong he fell, distracted with the wound,
The deck distain'd, and heart blood streaming round.
Another blast, as fatal in its aim,
Wing'd by destruction, through our rigging came,
And, whistling tunes from hell upon its way,
Shrouds, stays, and braces tore at once away,
Sails, blocks, and oars in scatter'd fragments fly—
Their softest language was—SUBMIT, OR DIE.

REPEATED cries throughout the ship resound;
Now every bullet brought a different wound;
'Twixt wind and water, one assail'd the side,
Through this aperture rush'd the briny tide—
'Twas then the Master trembled for his crew,
And bade thy shores, O Delaware, adieu!—
And must we yield to yon' destructive ball,
And must our colours to these ruffians fall!—
They fall!—his thunders forc'd our pride to bend,
The lofty topsails with their yards descend,
And the proud foe, such leagues of ocean pass'd,
His wish completed in our woe at last.

CONVEY'D TO YORK, we found, at length, too late,
That Death was better than the prisoner's fate,
There doom'd to famine, shackles and despair,
Condemn'd to breathe a foul, infected air
In sickly hulks, devoted while we lay,
Successive funerals gloom'd each dismal day—
But what on captives British rage can do,
Another Canto, friend, shall let you know.

CANTO II. The PRISON SHIP.

THE various horrors of these hulks to tell,
These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell,
Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign,
And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd, complain;

This be my talk—ungenerous Britons, you
Conspire to murder those you can't subdue.—

WEAK as I am, I'll try my strength to-day
And my best arrows at these hell-hounds play,
To future years one scene of death prolong,
And hang them up to infamy, in song.

THAT Britain's rage should dye our plains with gore,
And desolation spread through every shore,
None e'er could doubt, that her ambition knew,
This was to rage and disappointment due;
But that those monsters whom our soil maintain'd,
Who first drew breath in this devoted land,
Like famish'd wolves, should on their country prey,
Assist its foes, and wrest our lives away,
This shocks belief—and bids our soil disown
Such friends, subservient to a bankrupt crown,
By them the widow mourns her partner dead,
Her mangled sons to darksome prisons led,
By them—and hence my keenest sorrows rise,
My friend, my guardian, my Orestes dies;
Still for that loss must wretched I complain,
And sad Ophelia mourn her favourite swain.

AH! come the day when from this bloody shore
Fate shall remove them to return no more—
To scorch'd Bahama shall the traitors go
With grief and rage, and unremitting woe,
On burning sands to walk their painful round,
And sigh through all the solitary ground,
Where no gay flower their haggard eyes shall see,
And find no shade but from the cypress tree.

So much we suffer'd from the tribe I hate,
So near they shov'd me to the brink of fate,
When two long months in these dark Hulks we lay
Barr'd down by night, and fainting all the day
In the fierce fervours of the solar beam,
Cool'd by no breeze on Hudson's mountain-stream;
That not unsung these threescore days shall fall
To black oblivion that would cover all!—

No masts or sails these crowded ships adorn,
Dismal to view, neglected and forlorn!
Here, mighty ills oppress the imprison'd throng,
Dull were our slumbers, and our nights too long—
From morn to even along the decks we lay
Scorch'd into fevers by the solar ray;
No friendly awning cast a welcome shade,
Once was it promis'd, and was never made;
No favours could these sons of death bestow,
'Twas endless cursing, and continual woe;
Immortal hatred doth their breasts engage,
And this lost empire swells their souls with rage.

Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie,
Two, farther south, affront the pitying eye—
There, the black SCORPION at her mooring rides,
There, STROMBOLO swings, yielding to the tides;
Here, bulky JERSEY fills a larger space,
And HUNTER, to all hospitals disgrace—
Thou, Scorpion, fatal to the crowded throng,
Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song,
Requir'st my lay—thy sultry decks I know,
And all the torments that exist below!
The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills
Drain'd through her bottom in a thousand rills,
Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans,
Scarce on the waters she sustain'd her bones;
Here, doom'd to toil, or founder in the tide,
At the moist pumps incessantly we ply'd,
Here, doom'd to starve, like famish'd dogs we tore
The scant allowance, that our tyrants bore.

REMEMBRANCE shudders at this scene of fears—
Still in my view some English brute appears,
Some base-born Hessian slave walks threat'ning by,
Some servile Scot with murder in his eye
Still haunts my sight, as vainly they bemoan
Rebellions manag'd so unlike their own!
O may I never feel the poignant pain
To live subjected to such fiends again,

Stewards and Mates that hostile Britain bore,
Cut from the gallows on their native shore,
Their ghastly looks and vengeance-beaming eyes
Still to my view in dismal colours rise—
O may I ne'er review these dire abodes,
These piles for slaughter, floating on the floods,—
And you, that o'er the troubled ocean go,
Strike not your standards to this miscreant foe,
Better the greedy wave should swallow all,
Better to meet the death-conducted ball,
Better to sleep on ocean's deepest bed
At once destroy'd and number'd with the dead,
Than thus to perish in the face of day
Where twice ten thousand deaths one death delay.

WHEN to the ocean dives the western sun,
And the scorch'd Tories fire their evening gun,
“Down, rebels, down!” the angry Scotchmen cry,
“Dam'd dogs, descend, or by our broad swords die!”

HALE, dark abode! what can with thee compare—
Heat, sickness, famine, death, and stagnant air—
Pandora's box, from whence all mischief flew,
Here real found, torments mankind anew!—
Swift from the guarded decks we rush'd along,
And vainly sought repose, so vast our throng:
Three hundred wretches here, denied all light,
In crowded mansions pass the infernal night,
Some for a bed their tatter'd vestments join,
And some on chests, and some on floors recline;
Shut from the blessings of the evening air,
Pensive we lay with mingled corpses there,
Meagre and wan, and scorch'd with heat, below,
We loom'd like ghosts, ere death had made us so—
How could we else, where heat and hunger join'd
Thus to debase the body and the mind,
Where cruel thirst the parching throat invades,
Dries up the man, and fits him for the shades.

No waters laded from the bubbling spring
To these dire ships the British monsters bring—

By planks and ponderous beams completely wall'd
Invain for water, and invain, I call'd—
No drop was granted to the midnight prayer,
To Dives in these regions of despair!—
The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains,
Its poison circling through the languid veins;
“Here, generous Britain, generous, as you say,
“To my parch'd tongue one cooling drop convey,
“Hell has no mischief like a thirsty throat,
“Nor one tormentor like your David Sproat.”

DULL flew the hours, till, from the East display'd,
Sweet morn dispells the horrors of the shade;
On every side dire objects meet the sight,
And pallid forms, and murders of the night,
The dead were past their pain, the living groan,
Nor dare to hope another morn their own;
But what to them is morn's delightful ray,
Sad and distressful as the close of day,
O'er distant streams appears the dewy green
And leafy trees on mountain tops are seen,
But they no groves nor grassy mountains tread,
Mark'd for a longer journey to the dead.

BLACK as the clouds that shade St. Kilda's shore,
Wild as the winds that round her mountains roar,
At every post some surly vagrant stands,
Pick'd from the British or the Irish bands,
Some slave from Hesse, some hangman's son at least
Sold and transported, like his brother beast—
Some miscreant Tory, puff'd with upstart pride,
Led on by hell to take the royal side;
Dispensing death triumphantly they stand,
Their musquets ready to obey command;
Wounds are their sport, as ruin is their aim:
On their dark souls compassion has no claim,
And discord only can their spirits please:
Such were our tyrants here, and such were these.

INGRATITUDE! no curse like thee is found
Throughout this jarring world's extended round,
Their hearts with malice to our country swell
Because in former days we us'd them well—!
This pierces deep, too deeply wounds the breast;
We help'd them naked, friendless, and distrest,
Receiv'd their vagrants with an open hand,
Bestow'd them buildings, privilege, and land—
Behold the change!—when angry Britain rose,
These thankless tribes became our fiercest foes,
By them devoted, plunder'd, and accurst,
Stung by the serpents whom ourselves had nurs'd.

BUT such a train of endless woes abound,
So many mischiefs in these hulks are found,
That on them all a poem to prolong
Would swell too high the horrors of my song—
Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine,
And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine,
The mangled carcase, and the batter'd brain,
The doctor's poison, and the captain's cane,
The soldier's musquet, and the steward's debt,
The evening shackle, and the noon-day threat.

THAT juice destructive to the pangs of care
Which Rome of old, nor Athens could prepare.
Which gains the day for many a modern chief
When cool reflection yields a faint relief,
That charm, whose virtue warms the world beside,
Was by these tyrants to our use denied,
While yet they deign'd that healthy juice to lade
The putrid water felt its powerful aid;
But when refus'd—to aggravate our pains—
Then fevers rag'd and revel'd through our veins;
Throughout my frame I felt its deadly heat,
I felt my pulse with quicker motions beat:
A pallid hue o'er every face was spread,
Unusual pains attack'd the fainting head,
No physic here, no doctor to assist,
My name was enter'd on the sick man's list;

Twelve wretches more the same dark symptoms took,
And these were enter'd on the doctor's book,
The loathsome HUNTER was our destin'd place,
The HUNTER to all hospitals disgrace;
With soldiers sent to guard us on our road,
Joyful we left the SCORPION'S dire abode;
Some tears we shed for the remaining crew,
Then curs'd the hulk, and from her sides withdrew.

Commissary of Prisoners at New-York.

CANTO III. The HOSPITAL PRISON SHIP.

NOW tow'rd the HUNTER'S gloomy sides we came,
A slaughter-house, yet hospital in name;
For none came there (to pass through all degrees)
'Till half consum'd, and dying with disease;—
But when too near with labouring oars we ply'd
The Mate with curses drove us from the side;
That wretch who, banish'd from the navy crew,
Grown old in blood, did here his trade renew,
His serpent's tongue, when on his charge let loose,
Utter'd reproaches, scandal, and abuse,
Gave all to hell who dar'd his king disown,
And swore mankind were made for George alone:
Ten thousand times, to irritate our woe,
He wish'd us founder'd in the gulph below;
Ten thousand times he brandish'd high his stick,
And swore as often that we were not sick—
And yet so pale!—that we were thought by some
A freight of ghosts from Death's dominions come—
But calm'd at length—for who can always rage,
Or the fierce war of endless passion wage,
He pointed to the stairs that led below
To damps, disease, and varied shapes of woe—
Down to the gloom I took my pensive way,
Along the decks the dying captives lay;
Some struck with madness, some with scurvy pain'd,
But still of putrid fevers most complain'd!
On the hard floors these wasted objects laid,
There toss'd and tumbled in the dismal shade,

There no soft voice their bitter fate bemoan'd,
And Death trode stately, while the victims groan'd;
Of leaky decks I heard them long complain,
Drown'd as they were in deluges of rain,
Deny'd the comforts of a dying bed,
And not a pillow to support the head—
How could they else but pine, and grieve, and sigh,
Detest a wretched life—and wish to die.

SCARCE had I mingled with this dismal band
When a thin spectre seiz'd me by the hand—
“And art thou come, (death heavy on his eyes)
“And art thou come to these abodes, he cries;
“Why didst thou leave the Scorpion's dark retreat,
“And hither haste a surer death to meet?
“Why didst thou leave thy damp infected cell,
“If that was purgatory, this is hell—
“We too grown weary of that horrid shade
“Petitioned early for the doctor's aid;
“His aid denied, more deadly symptoms came,
“Weak, and yet weaker, glow'd the vital flame;
“And when disease had worn us down so low
“That few could tell if we were ghosts, or no,
“And all asserted, death would be our fate—
“Then to the doctor we were sent—too late.
“Here wastes away Autolycus the brave,
“Here young Orestes finds a wat'ry grave,
“Here, gay Alcander gay, alas! no more,
“Dies far sequester'd from his native shore;
“He late, perhaps, too eager for the fray,
“Chac'd the vile Briton o'er the wat'ry way
“'Till fortune jealous, bade her clouds appear,
“Turn'd hostile to his fame, and brought him here,

“THUS do our warriors, thus our heroes fall,
“Imprison'd here, base ruin meets them all,
“Or, sent afar to Britain's barbarous shore,
“There die neglected, and return no more:
“Ah rest in peace, poor, injur'd, parted shade,
“By cruel hands in death's dark weeds array'd,

“But happier climes, where suns unclouded shine,
“Light undisturb'd, and endless peace are thine.”—

FROM Brookland groves a Hessian doctor came,
Not great his skill, nor greater much his fame;
Fair Science never call'd the wretch her son,
And Art disdain'd the stupid man to own;—
Can you admire that Science was so coy,
Or Art refus'd his genius to employ!—
Do men with brutes an equal dullness share,
Or cuts yon' groveling mole the midway air—
In polar worlds can Eden's blossoms blow,
Do trees of God in barren desarts grow,
Are loaded vines to Etna's summit known,
Or swells the peach beneath the torrid zone—?
Yet still he doom'd his genius to the rack,
And, as you may suppose, was own'd a quack.

HE on his charge the healing work begun
With antimonial mixtures, by the tun,
Ten minutes was the time he deign'd to stay,
The time of grace allotted once a day—
He drencht us well with bitter draughts, 'tis true,
Nostrums from hell, and cortex from Peru—
Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign,
And some he blister'd with his flies of Spain;
His cream of Tartar walk'd its deadly round,
Till the lean patient at the potion frown'd,
And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will,
Were nonsense to the drugs that stuff'd his bill.—
On those refusing he bestow'd a kick,
Or menac'd vengeance with his walking stick,
Here uncontroul'd he exercis'd his trade,
And grew experienced by the deaths he made,
By frequent blows we from his cane endur'd
He kill'd at least as many as he cur'd,
On our lost comrades built his future fame,
And scatter'd fate, where'er his footsteps came.

SOME did not seem obedient to his will,
And swore he mingled poison with his pill,

But I acquit him by a fair confession,
He was no Englishman—he was a Hessian—
Although a dunce, he had some sense of sin
Or else the Lord knows where we now had been;
Perhaps in that far country sent to range
Where never prisoner meets with an exchange—
Then had we all been banish'd out of time
Nor I return'd to plague the world with rhyme.

FOOL though he was, yet candour must confess
Not chief Physician was this dog of Hesse—
One master o'er the murdering tribe was plac'd,
By him the rest were honour'd or disgrac'd;—
Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led
He came to see the dying and the dead—
He came—but anger so deform'd his eye,
And such a faulchion glitter'd on his thigh
And such a gloom his visage darken'd o'er,
And two such pistols in his hands he bore!
That, by the gods!—with such a load of steel
He came, we thought, to murder, not to heal—
Hell in his heart, and mischief in his head,
He gloom'd destruction, and had smote us dead,
Had he so dar'd—but fate with-held his hand—
He came—blasphem'd—and turn'd again to land.

FROM this poor vessel, and her sickly crew
An English ruffian all his titles drew,
Captain, esquire, commander, too, in chief,
And hence he gain'd his bread, and hence his beef,
But, sir, you might have search'd creation round
Ere such another miscreant could be found—
Though unprovok'd, an angry face he bore,
We stood astonish'd at the oaths he swore;
He swore, till every prisoner stood aghast,
And thought him Satan in a brimstone blast;
He wish'd us banish'd from the public light,
He wish'd us shrouded in perpetual night!
That were he king, no mercy would he show,
But drive all rebels to the world below;

That if we scoundrels did not scrub the decks
His staff should break our damn'd rebellious necks;
He swore, besides, that if the ship took fire
We too should in the pitchy flame expire;
And meant it so—this tyrant I engage
Had lost his breath to gratify his rage.—

IF where he walk'd a captive carcase lay,
Still dreadful was the language of the day—
He call'd us dogs, and would have us'd us so,
But vengeance check'd the meditated blow,
The vengeance from our injur'd nation due
To him, and all the base, unmanly crew.

SUCH food they sent, to make complete our woes,
It look'd like carrion torn from hungry crows,
Such vermin vile on every joint were seen,
So black, corrupted, mortified, and lean
That once we try'd to move our flinty chief,
And thus address'd him, holding up the beef:

“SEE, captain, see! what rotten bones we pick,
“What kills the healthy cannot cure the sick:
“Not dogs on such by Christian men are fed,
“And see, good master, see, what lousy bread!”

“YOUR meat and bread (this man of flint replied)
“Is not my care to manage or provide—
“But this, damn'd rebel dogs, I'd have you know,
That better than you merit we bestow;
“Out of my sight!”—nor more he deign'd to say,
But whisk'd about, and frowning, strode away.

EACH day, at least three carcases we bore,
And scratch'd them graves along the sandy shore,
By feeble hands the shallow graves were made,
No stone memorial o'er the corpses laid;
In barren sands, and far from home, they lie,
No friend to shed a tear, when passing by;
O'er the mean tombs insulting Britons tread,
Spurn at the sand, and curse the rebel dead.

WHEN to your arms these fatal islands fall,
(For first or last they must be conquer'd all)

Americans! to rites sepulchral just,
With gentlest footstep press this kindred dust,
And o'er the tombs, if tombs can then be found,
Place the green turf, and plant the myrtle round.

AMERICANS! a just resentment shew,
And glut revenge on this detested foe;
While the warm blood exults the glowing vein
Still shall resentment in your bosoms reign,
Can you forget the greedy Briton's ire,
Your fields in ruin, and your domes on fire,
No age, no sex from lust and murder free,
And, black as night, the hell born refugee!
Must York forever your best blood entomb,
And these gorg'd monsters triumph in their doom,
Who leave no art of cruelty untry'd;
Such heavy vengeance, and such hellish pride!
Death has no charms—his realms dejected lie
In the dull climate of a clouded sky,
Death has no charms, except in British eyes,
See, arm'd for death, the infernal miscreants rise,
See how they pant to stain the world with gore,
And millions murder'd, still would murder more;
This selfish race, from all the world disjoin'd,
Perpetual discord spread throughout mankind,
Aim to extend their empire o'er the ball,
Subject, destroy, absorb, and conquer all,
As if the power that form'd us did condemn
All other nations to be slaves to them—
Rouse from your sleep, and crush the thievish band,
Defeat, destroy, and sweep them from the land,
Ally'd like you, what madness to despair,
Attack the ruffians while they linger there;
There Tryon sits, a monster all complete
See Clinton there with vile Knyphausen meet,
And every wretch whom honour should detest
There finds a home—and Arnold with the rest.
Ah! traitors, lost to every sense of shame,
Unjust supporters of a tyrant's claim;

Foes to the rights of freedom and of men,
Flush'd with the blood of thousands you have slain,
To the just doom the righteous skies decree
We leave you, toiling still in cruelty,
Or on dark plans in future herds to meet,
Plans form'd in hell, and projects half complete:
The years approach that shall to ruin bring
Your lords, your chiefs, your miscreant of a king
Whose murderous acts shall stamp his name accurs'd,
And his last triumphs more than damn the first.

1781

On THE MEMORABLE VICTORY,

Obtained by the gallant Captain Paul Jones, of Le Bon Homme Richard, (or father Richard) over the Seraphis, of 44 guns, under the command of Captain Pearson:

[_]

First published in Mr. Francis Bailey's Freeman's Journal, Philadelphia, 1781.

O'er the rough main with flowing sheet
The guardian of a numerous fleet,
Seraphis from the Baltic came;
A ship of less tremendous force
Sailed by her side the self-same course,
Countess of Scarborough was her name.

And now their native coasts appear,
Britannia's hills their summits rear
Above the German main:
Fond to suppose their dangers o'er,
They southward coast along the shore,
Thy waters, gentle Thames, to gain.

Full forty guns Seraphis bore,
And Scarborough's Countess twenty-four,
Manned with Old England's boldest tars—

What flag that rides the Gallic seas
Shall dare attack such piles as these,
Designed for tumults and for wars!

Now from the top-mast's giddy heights
A seaman cried—“Four sail in sight
“Approach with favouring gales;”
Pearson, resolved to save the fleet,
Stood off to sea, these ships to meet,
And closely braced his shivering sails.

With him advanc'd the Countess bold,
Like a black tar in wars grown old:
And now these floating piles drew nigh;
But, muse, unfold, what chief of fame
In the other warlike squadron came,
Whose standards at his mast head fly.

'Twas Jones, brave JONES, to battle led
As bold a crew as ever bled
Upon the sky-surrounded main;
The standards of the western world
Were to the willing winds unfurled,
Denying Britain's tyrant reign.

The Good-Man-Richard led the line;
The Alliance next: with these combine
The Gallic ship they Pallas call:
The Vengeance, armed with sword and flame,
These to attack the Britons came—
But two accomplished all.

Now Phoebus sought his pearly bed:
But who can tell the scenes of dread,
The horrors of that fatal night!
Close up these floating castles came;
The Good Man Richard bursts in flame;
Seraphis trembled at the sight.

She felt the fury of her ball:
Down, prostrate down, the Britons fall;
The decks were strewed with slain:
Jones to the foe his vessel lashed;
And, while the black artillery flashed,
Loud thunders shook the main.

Alas! that mortals should employ
Such murdering engines, to destroy
That frame by heaven so nicely joined;
Alas! that e'er the god decreed
That brother should by brother bleed,
And pour'd such madness in the mind.

But thou, brave Jones, no blame shalt bear;
The rights of men demand thy care:
For these you dare the greedy waves—
No tyrant, on destruction bent
Has planned thy conquests—thou art sent
To humble tyrants and their slaves.

See!—dread Seraphis flames again—
And art thou, Jones, among the slain,
And sunk to Neptune's caves below—
He lives—though crowds around him fall,
Still he, unhurt, survives them all;
Almost alone he fights the foe.

And can thy ship these strokes sustain?
Behold thy brave companions slain,
All clasped in ocean's dark embrace.
“STRIKE, OR BE SUNK!”—the Briton cries—
“SINK, IF YOU CAN!”—the chief replies,
Fierce lightnings blazing in his face.

Then to the side three guns he drew,
(Almost deserted by his crew)
And charged them deep with woe:

By Pearson's flash he aim'd hot balls;
His main-mast totters—down it falls—
O'erwhelming half below.

Pearson as yet disdained to yield,
But scarce he secret fears concealed,
And thus was heard to cry—
“With hell, not mortals, I contend;
“What art thou—human or a fiend,
“That dost my force defy?

“Return, my lads, the fight renew!”
So called bold Pearson to his crew;
But called, alas! in vain;
Some on the decks lay maimed and dead;
Some to their deep recesses fled,
And more were shrouded in the main.

Distressed, forsaken, and alone,
He hauled his tattered standard down,
And yielded to his gallant foe;
Bold Pallas soon the Countess took,—
Thus both their haughty colours struck,
Confessing what the brave can do.

But, Jones, too dearly didst thou buy
These ships possest so gloriously,
Too many deaths disgraced the fray:
Thy barque that bore the conquering flame,
That the proud Briton overcame,
Even she forsook thee on thy way;

For when the morn began to shine,
Fatal to her, the ocean brine
Poured through each spacious wound;
Quick in the deep she disappeared,
But Jones to friendly Belgia steered,
With conquest and with glory crowned.

Go on, great man, to scourge the foe,
And bid the haughty Britons know
They to our Thirteen Stars shall bend;
The Stars that clad in dark attire,
Long glimmered with a feeble fire,
But radiant now ascend.

Bend to the Stars that flaming rise
On western worlds, more brilliant skies.
Fair Freedom's reign restored.
So when the Magi, come from far,
Beheld the God-attending Star,
They trembled and adored.

1781

TO LORD CORNWALLIS,

AT YORK-VIRGINIA, October 8, 1781.

Hail, great destroyer (equall'd yet by none)
Of countries not thy master's, nor thine own;
Hatch'd by some demon on a stormy day,
Satan's best substitute to burn and slay;
Confin'd at last, hemm'd in by land and sea
Burgoyne himself was but a type of thee!

LIKE his, to freedom was thy deadly hate,
Like his thy baseness, and be his thy fate:
To you, like him, no prospect Nature yields
But ruin'd wastes and desolated fields—
Invain you raise the interposing wall,
And hoist those standards that, like you, must fall,
In you conclude the glories of your race,
Complete your monarch's, and your own disgrace.

What has your lordship's pilfering arms attain'd?—
Vast stores of plunder, but no STATE regain'd—

That may return, though you perhaps may groan,
Restore it, ruffian, for 'tis not your own—
Then, lord and soldier, headlong to the brine
Rush down at once—the devil and the swine.

WOULD'ST thou at last with Washington engage,
Sad object of his pity, not his rage?
See, round thy posts how terribly advance
The chiefs, the armies, and the fleets of France,
Fight while you can, for warlike Rochambeau
Aims at your head his last decisive blow,
Unnumber'd ghosts, from earth untimely sped,
Can take no rest till you, like them, are dead—
Then die, my Lord; that only chance remains
To wash away dishonourable stains,
For small advantage would your capture bring,
The plundering servant of a bankrupt king.

[w. 1781]

1786

ON THE FALL OF GENERAL EARL CORNWALLIS,

Who, with above seven thousand Men, surrendered themselves prisoners of war, to the renowned and illustrious General GEORGE WASHINGTON, commander in chief of the allied armies of France and America, on the memorable 19th of October, 1781.

“Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
“That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile
“Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh,
“Before this earthly prison of their bones;
“That so the shadows be not unappeas'd,
“Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth.”
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Act. I. Scene II

A Chieftain join'd with Howe, Burgoyne, and Gage,
Once more, nor this the last, provokes my rage—

Who saw these Nimrods first for conquest burn!
Who has not seen them to the dust return?
This ruffian next, who scour'd our ravag'd fields,
Foe to the human race, Cornwallis yields!—
None e'er before essay'd such desperate crimes,
Alone he stood, arch-butcher of the times,
Rov'd uncontroul'd this wasted country o'er,
Strew'd plains with dead, and bath'd his jaws with gore?

'TWAS thus the wolf, who sought by night his prey,
And plunder'd all he met with on his way,
Stole what he could, and murder'd as he pass'd,
Chanc'd on a trap, and lost his head at last.

WHAT pen can write, what human tongue can tell
The endless murders of this man of hell!
Nature in him disgrac'd the form divine;
Nature mistook, she meant him for a—swine:
That eye his forehead to her shame adorns;
Blush! nature, blush—bestow him tail and horns!—
By him the orphans mourn—the widow'd dame
Saw ruin spreading in the wasteful flame;
Gash'd o'er with wounds beheld with streaming eye
A son, a brother, or a consort, die!—
Through ruin'd realms bones lie without a tomb,
And souls be sped to their eternal doom,
Who else had liv'd, and seen their toils again
Bless'd by the genius of the rural reign.

BUT turn your eyes, and see the murderer fall,
Then say—“Cornwallis has atchiev'd it all.”—
Yet he preserves the honour and the fame
That vanquish'd heroes only ought to claim—
Is he a hero!—Read, and you will find
Heroes are beings of a different kind:—
Compassion to the worst of men is due,
And mercy heaven's first attribute, 'tis true;
Yet most presume it was too nobly done
To grant mild terms to Satan's first-born son.

CONVINC'D we are, no foreign spot of earth
But Britain only, gave this reptile birth.

That white-cliff'd isle, the vengeful dragon's den,
Has sent us monsters where we look'd for men.
When memory paints their horrid deeds anew,
And brings these murdering miscreants to your view,
Then ask the leaders of these bloody bands,
Can they expect compassion at our hands?—

BUT may this year, the glorious eighty-one,
Conclude successful, as it first begun;
This brilliant year their total downfall see,
And what Cornwallis is, may Clinton be.

O COME the time, nor distant be the day,
When our bold navy shall its wings display;
Mann'd by our sons, to seek that barbarous shore,
The wrongs revenging that their fathers bore:
As Samuel hew'd the tyrant Agag down,
So hew the wearer of the British crown;
Unpitying, next his hated offspring slay,
Or into foreign lands the fiends convey:
Give them their turn to pine and die in chains,
'Till not one monster of the race remains.

THOU, who resid'st on those thrice happy shores,
Where white rob'd peace her envied blessings pours,
Stay, and enjoy the pleasures that she yields;
But come not, stranger, to our wasted fields.
For warlike hosts on every plain appear,
War damps the beauties of the rising year:
In vain the groves their bloomy sweets display;
War's clouded winter chills the charms of May:
Here human blood the trampled harvest stains;
Here bones of men yet whiten all the plains;
Seas teem with dead; and our unhappy shore
Forever blushes with its children's gore.

BUT turn your eyes—behold the tyrant fall,
And think—Cornwallis has atchiev'd it all.—

ALL mean revenge Americans disdain,
Oft have they prov'd it, and now prove again;
With nobler fires their generous bosoms glow;
Still in the captive they forget the foe:—

But when a nation takes a wrongful cause,
And hostile turns to heaven's and nature's laws;
When, sacrificing at ambition's shrine,
Kings slight the mandates of the power divine,
And devastation spread on every side,
To gratify their malice or their pride,
And send their slaves their projects to fulfil,
To wrest our freedom, or our blood to spill:—
Such to forgive, is virtue too sublime;
For even compassion has been found a crime.

A PROPHET once, for miracles renown'd,
Bade Joash smite the arrows on the ground—
Taking the mystic shafts, the prince obey'd,
Thrice smote them on the earth—and then he stay'd—

GRIEV'D when he saw full victory deny'd,
“Six times you should have smote,” the prophet cry'd,
“Then had proud Syria sunk beneath thy power;
“Now thrice you smite her—but shall smite no more.”

CORNWALLIS! thou art rank'd among the great;
Such was the will of all-controuling fate.
As mighty men, who liv'd in days of yore,
Were figur'd out some centuries before;
So you with them in equal honour join,
Your great precursor's name was Jack Burgoyne!
Like you was he, a man in arms renown'd,
Who, hot for conquest, sail'd the ocean round;
This, this was he, who scour'd the woods for praise,
And burnt down cities to describe the blaze!

So, while on fire, his harp Rome's tyrant strung,
And as the buildings flam'd, old Nero sung.

WHO would have guess'd the purpose of the fates,
When that proud boaster bow'd to conquering Gates!—
Then sung the sisters as the wheel went round,
(Could we have heard the invigorating sound)

Thus surely did the fatal sisters sing—
“When just four years do this same season bring,
“And in his annual journey, when the sun
“Four times completely shall his circuit run,
“An angel then shall rid you of your fears,
“By binding Satan for a thousand years,
“Shall lash the serpent to the infernal shore,
“To waste the nations, and deceive no more,
“Make wars and blood, and tyranny to cease,
“And hush the fiends of Britain into peace.”

JOY to your lordship, and your high descent,
You are the Satan that the sisters meant.
Too soon you found your race of ruin run,
Your conquests ended, and your battles done!
But that to live is better than to die,
And life you chose, though life with infamy,
You should have climb'd your loftiest vessel's deck,
And hung a millstone round your halter'd neck—
Then plung'd forever to the wat'ry bed,
Hell in your heart, and vengeance on your head.

ALL must confess, that in regard to you,
'Twas wrong to rob the devil of his due—
For Hayne, for Hayne! no death but thine atones;
For thee, Cornwallis, how the gallows groans!
That injur'd man's, and all the blood you've shed,
That blood shall rest on your devoted head;
Asham'd to live, and yet afraid to die,
Your courage slacken'd as the foe drew nigh—
Ungrateful wretch, to yield your favourite band
To chains and prisons in a hostile land:
To the wide world your Negro friends to cast
And leave your Tories to be hang'd at last!—
You should have fought with horror and amaze,
'Till scorch'd to cinders in the cannon blaze,
'Till all your host of Beelzebubs was slain,
Doom'd to disgrace no human shape again—
As if from hell this horned host he drew,
Swift from the South the embodied ruffians flew;

Destruction follow'd at their cloven feet,
'Till you, Fayette, constrain'd them to retreat,
And held them close, till thy fam'd squadron came,
De Grasse, completing their eternal shame.

WHEN the loud cannon's unremitting glare
And red hot balls compell'd you to despair,
How could you stand to meet your generous foe?
Did not the sight confound your soul with woe?—
In thy great soul what god-like virtues shine,
What inborn greatness, WASHINGTON, is thine!—
Else had no prisoner trod these lands to-day,
All, with his lordship, had been swept away,
All doom'd alike death's vermin to regale,
Nor one been left to tell the dreadful tale!
But his own terms the vanquish'd murderer nam'd—
He nobly gave the miscreant all he claim'd,
And bade Cornwallis, conquer'd and distress'd,
Bear all his torments in his tortur'd breast.

Now curs'd with life, a foe to man and God,
Like Cain, I drive you to the land of Nod.
He with a brother's blood his hands did stain,
One brother he, you have a thousand slain.
And, O! may heaven affix some public mark
To know Cornwallis—may he howl and bark!—
On eagle's wings explore your downward flight
To the deep horrors of the darkest night,
Where, wrapt in shade on ocean's utmost bound,
No longer sun, nor moon, nor stars are found;
Where never light her kindling radiance shed,
But the dark comets rove with all their dead,
Doom'd through the tracks of endless space to run
No more revolving to confound the sun.

SUCH horrid deeds your spotted soul defame
We grieve to think your shape and ours the same!
Enjoy what comfort in this life you can,
The form you have, not feelings of a man;

Haste to the rocks, thou curse to human kind,
There thou may'st wolves and brother tygers find;
Eternal exile be your righteous doom
And gnash your dragon's teeth in some sequester'd gloom
Such be the end of each relentless foe
Who feels no pity for another's woe—
So may they fall—even you, though much too late,
Shall curse the day you languish'd to be great;
Haste from the torments of the present life—
Quick, let the halter end thee or the knife;
So may destruction rush with speedy wing,
Low as yourself to drag your cruel king,
His head torn off, his hands, his feet, and all,
Deep in the dust may Dagon's image fall;
His stump alone escape the vengeful steel,
Sav'd but to grace the gibbet or the wheel.

1781

Charlestown, near Boston. See his letter on that occasion.

The Parcae, or Fates, who, according to the Heathen mythology were three in number.

See Whiston's Hypothesis.

TO THE MEMORY Of the brave AMERICANS,

under General GREENE, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781.

AT Eutaw springs the valiant died:
Their limbs with dust are cover'd o'er—
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck of ruin, they
Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite thy gentle breast, and say
The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast,
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;
Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble graves adorn;
You too may fall, and ask a tear:
'Tis not the beauty of the morn
That proves the evening shall be clear—

They saw their injur'd country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear—but left the shield,

Led by thy conquering genius, GREENE,
The Britons they compell'd to fly:
None distant view'd the fatal plain,
None griev'd, in such a cause, to die—

But, like the Parthian, fam'd of old,
Who, flying, still their arrows threw;
These routed Britons, full as bold,
Retreated, and retreating slew.

Now rest in peace, our patriot band;
Though far from Nature's limits thrown,
We trust, they find a happier land,
A brighter sun-shine of their own.

1781

ARNOLD'S DEPARTURE.

With evil omens from the harbour sails
The ill-fated ship that worthless ARNOLD bears,
God of the southern winds, call up thy gales,
And whistle in rude fury round his ears.

With horrid waves insult his vessel's sides,
And may the east wind on a leeward shore
Her cables snap, while she in tumult rides,
And shatter into shivers every oar,

And let the north wind to her ruin haste,
With such a rage, as when from mountains high
He rends the tall oak with his weighty blast,
And ruin spreads, where'er his forces fly.

May not one friendly star that night be seen;
No Moon, attendant, dart one glimmering ray
Nor may she ride on oceans more serene
Than Greece, triumphant, found that stormy day,

When angry Pallas spent her rage no more
On vanquish'd Ilium, then in ashes laid,
But turn'd it on the barque that Ajax bore,
Avenging thus her temple, and the maid.

When toss'd upon the vast Atlantic main
Your groaning ship the southern gales shall tear,
How will your sailors sweat, and you complain
And meanly howl to Jove, that will not hear!

But if, at last, upon some winding shore
A prey to hungry cormorants you lie,
A wanton goat to every stormy power,
And a fat lamb, in sacrifice, shall die.

Dec. 1782

Imitated from Horace.

Ajax the younger, son of Oileus, king of the Locrians. He debauched Cassandra in the temple of Pallas, which was the cause of his misfortune, on his return from the siege of Troy.

The Tempests were Goddesses among the Romans.

THE POLITICAL BALANCE; OR, THE FATES OF BRITAIN AND AMERICA COMPARED: A TALE.

Deciding Fates, in Homer's stile, we shew,
And bring contending gods once more to view.

AS Jove the Olympian (who both I and you know,
Was brother to Neptune, and husband to Juno)
Was lately reviewing his papers of state,
He happened to light on the records of Fate.

In Alphabet order this volume was written—
So he opened at B, for the article Britain—
She struggles so well, said the god, I will see
What the sisters in Pluto's dominions decree.

And, first, on the top of a column he read
“Of a king, with a mighty soft place in his head,
“Who should join in his temper the ass and the mule,
“The third of his name, and by far the worst fool:

“His reign shall be famous for multiplication,
“The sire and the king of a whelp generation:
“But such is the will and the purpose of fate,
“For each child he begets he shall forfeit a State:

“In the course of events, he shall find to his cost
“That he cannot regain what he foolishly lost;
“Of the nations around he shall be the derision,
“And know, by experience, the rule of Division.”

So Jupiter read—a god of first rank—
And still had read on—but he came to a blank:
For the Fates had neglected the rest to reveal—
They either forgot it, or chose to conceal:

When a leaf is torn out, or a blot on a page
That pleases our fancy, we fly in a rage—
So, curious to know what the Fates would say next,
No wonder if Jove, disappointed, was vext.

But still, as true genius not frequently fails,
He glanced at the Virgin, and thought of the Scales;
And said, “To determine the will of the Fates,
“One scale shall weigh Britain, the other the States.”

Then turning to Vulcan, his maker of thunder,
Said he, “My dear Vulcan, I pray you look yonder,
“Those creatures are tearing each other to pieces,
“And, instead of abating, the carnage increases.

“Now, as you are a blacksmith, and lusty stout ham-eater,
“You must make me a globe of a shorter diameter;
“The world in abridgement, and just as it stands
“With all its proportions of waters and lands;

“But its various divisions must so be designed,
“That I can unhinge it whene'er I've a mind—
“How else should I know what the portions will weigh,
“Or which of the combatants carry the day?”

Old Vulcan complied, (we've no reason to doubt it)
So he put on his apron and strait went about it—
Made center, and circles as round as a pancake,
And here the Pacific, and there the Atlantic.

An axis he hammered, whose ends were the poles,
(On which the whole body perpetually rolls)
A brazen meridian he added to these,
Where four times repeated were ninety degrees.

I am sure you had laughed to have seen his droll attitude,
When he bent round the surface the circles of latitude,
The zones, and the tropics, meridians, equator,
And other fine things that are drawn on salt water.

Away to the southward (instructed by Pallas)
He placed in the ocean the Terra Australis,
New Holland, New Guinea, and so of the rest—
AMERICA lay by herself in the west:

From the regions where winter eternally reigns,
To the climes of Peru he extended her plains;
Dark groves, and the zones did her bosom adorn,
And the Crosiers, new burnished, he hung at Cape Horn.

The weight of two oceans she bore on her sides,
With all their convulsions of tempests and tides;
Vast lakes on her surface did fearfully roll,
And the ice from her rivers surrounded the pole.

Then Europe and Asia he northward extended,
Where under the Arctic with Zembla they ended;
(The length of these regions he took with his garters,
Including Siberia, the land of the Tartars).

In the African clime (where the cocoa-nut tree grows)
He laid down the desarts, and even the negroes,
The shores by the waves of four oceans embraced,
And elephants strolling about in the waste.

In forming East India, he had a wide scope,
Beginning his work at the cape of Good Hope;
Then eastward of that he continued his plan,
'Till he came to the empire and isles of Japan.

Adjacent to Europe he struck up an island,
(One part of it low, but the other was high land)
With many a comical creature upon it,
And one wore a hat, and another a bonnet.

Like emmits or ants in a fine summer's day,
They ever were marching in battle array,

Or skipping about on the face of the brine,
Like witches in egg-shells (their ships of the line.)

These poor little creatures were all in a flame,
To the lands of America, urging their claim,
Still biting, or stinging, or spreading their sails;
(For Vulcan had formed them with stings in their tails.)

So poor and so lean, you might count all their ribs,
Yet were so enraptured with crackers and squibs,
That Vulcan with laughter almost split asunder,
“Because they imagined their crackers were thunder.”

Due westward from these, with a channel between,
A servant to slaves, Hibernia was seen,
Once crowded with monarchs, and high in renown,
But all she retained was the Harp and the Crown!

Insulted forever by nobles and priests,
And managed by bullies, and governed by beasts,
She looked!—to describe her I hardly know how—
Such an image of death in the scowl on her brow:

For scaffolds and halters were full in her view,
And the fiends of perdition their cutlasses drew:
And axes and gibbets around her were placed,
And the demons of murder her honours defaced—
With the blood of the WORTHY her mantle was stained,
And hardly a trace of her beauty remained.

Her genius, a female, reclined in the shade,
And, sick of oppression, so mournfully played,
That Jove was uneasy to hear her complain,
And ordered his blacksmith to loosen her chain:

Then tipt her a wink, saying, “Now is your time,
“(To rebel is the sin, to revolt is no crime)

“When your fetters are off, if you dare not be free
“Be a slave and be damned, but complain not to me.”

But finding her timid, he cried in a rage—
“Though the doors are flung open, she stays in the cage!
“Subservient to Britain then let her remain,
“And her freedom shall be, but the choice of her chain.”

At length, to discourage all stupid pretensions,
Jove looked at the globe, and approved its dimensions,
And cried in a transport—“Why what have we here!
“Friend Vulcan, it is a most beautiful sphere!

“Now while I am busy in taking apart
“This globe that is formed with such exquisite art,
“Go, Hermes, to Libra, (you're one of her gallants)
“And ask, in my name, for the loan of her balance.”

Away posted Hermes, as swift as the gales,
And as swiftly returned with the ponderous scales,
And hung them aloft to a beam in the air,
So equally poised, they had turned with a hair.

Now Jove to COLUMBIA his shoulders applied,
But aiming to lift her, his strength she defied—
Then, turning about to their godships, he says—
“A BODY SO VAST is not easy to raise;

“But if you assist me, I still have a notion
“Our forces, united, can put her in motion,
“And swing her aloft, (though alone I might fail)
“And place her, in spite of her bulk, in our scale;

“If six years together the Congress have strove,
“And more than divided the empire with Jove;
“With a Jove like myself, who am nine times as great,
“You can join, like their soldiers, to heave up this weight.”

So to it they went, with handspikes and levers,
And upward she sprung, with her mountains and rivers!
Rocks, cities, and islands, deep waters and shallows,
Ships, armies, and forests, high heads, and fine fellows:

“Stick to it!” cries Jove “now heave one and all!
“At least we are lifting one-eighth of the ball!”
“If backward she tumbles—then trouble begins,
“And then have a care, my dear boys, of your shins!”

When gods are determined what project can fail?
So they gave a hard shove, and she mounted the scale;
Suspended aloft, Jove viewed her with awe—
And the gods, for their pay, had a hearty—huzza!

But Neptune bawled out—“Why Jove you're a noddy,
“Is Britain sufficient to poise that vast body?
“'Tis nonsense such castles to build in the air—
“As well might an oyster with Britain compare.”

“Away to your waters, you blustering bully,”
Said Jove, “or I'll make you repent of your folly,
“Is Jupiter, Sir, to be tutored by you?—
“Get out of my sight, for I know what to do!”

Then searching about with his fingers for Britain,
Thought he, “this same island I cannot well hit on!
The devil take him who first called her the GREAT:
“If she was—she is vastly diminished of late!”

Like a man that is searching his thigh for a flea,
He peeped and he fumbled, but nothing could see;
At last he exclaimed—“I am surely upon it—
“I think I have hold of a Highlander's bonnet.”

But finding his error, he said with a sigh,
“This bonnet is only the island of Skie,

So away to his namesake the PLANET he goes,
And borrowed two moons to hang on his nose.

Through these, as through glasses, he saw her quite clear,
And in rapture cried out—“I have found her—she's here!
“If this be not Britain, then call me an ass,
“She looks like a gem in an ocean of glass.

“But faith, she's so small I must mind how I shake her;
“In a box I'll enclose her, for fear I should break her:
“Though a god, I might suffer for being aggressor,
“Since scorpions, and vipers, and hornets possess her;

“The white cliffs of Albion I think I descry,
“And the hills of Plinlimmon appear rather nigh—
“But, Vulcan, inform me what creatures are these,
“That smell so of onions, and garlick, and cheese?”

Old Vulcan replied—“Odds splutter a nails!
“Why, these are the Welch, and the country is Wales!
“When Taffy is vext, no devil is ruder—
“Take care how you trouble the offspring of TUDOR!

“On the crags of the mountains hur living hur seeks,
“Hur country is planted with garlick and leeks;
“So great is hur choler, beware how you teaze hur,
“For these are the Britons—unconquered by Caesar.”

“But now, my dear Juno, pray give me my mittens,
“(These insects I am going to handle are Britons)
“I'll draw up their isle with a finger and thumb,
“As the doctor extracts an old tooth from the gum.”

Then he raised her aloft—but to shorten our tale,
She looked like a CLOD in the opposite scale—
Britannia so small, and Columbia so large—
A ship of first rate, and a ferryman's barge!

Cried Pallas to Vulcan, “Why, Jove's in a dream—
“Observe how he watches the turn of the beam!
“Was ever a mountain outweighed by a grain?
“Or what is a drop when compared to the main?”

But Momus alledged—“in my humble opinion,
“You should add to Great-Britain her foreign dominion,
“When this is appended, perhaps she will rise,
“And equal her rival in weight and in size.”

“Alas! (said the monarch), your project is vain,
“But little is left of her foreign domain;
“And, scattered about in the liquid expanse,
“That little is left to the mercy of France;

“However, we'll lift them, and give her fair play”—
And soon in the scale with their mistress they lay;
But the gods were confounded and struck with surprise,
And Vulcan could hardly believe his own eyes!

For (such was the purpose and guidance of fate)
Her foreign dominions diminished her weight—
By which it appeared, to Britain's disaster,
Her foreign possessions were changing their master.

Then, as he replaced them, said Jove with a smile—
“COLUMBIA shall never be ruled by an isle—
“But vapours and darkness around her may rise,
“And tempests conceal her awhile from our eyes;

“So locusts in Egypt their squadrons display,
“And rising, disfigure the face of the day;
“So the moon, at her full, has a frequent eclipse,
“And the sun in the ocean diurnally dips.

“Then cease your endeavours, ye vermin of Britain—
(And here, in derision, their island he spit on)

“'Tis madness to seek what you never can find,
“Or to think of uniting what nature disjoined;

“But still you may flutter awhile with your wings,
“And spit out your venom and brandish your stings:
“Your hearts are as black, and as bitter as gall,
“A curse to mankind—and a blot on the BALL.”

April 1782

Stars, in the form of a cross, which mark the South Pole in Southern latitudes.

Their national debt being now above £200,000,000 sterling

American soldiers.

An Island on the north-west of Scotland.

It is hoped that such a sentiment may not be deemed wholly illiberal. Every candid person will certainly draw a line between a brave and magnanimous people, and a most vicious and vitiating government. Perhaps the following extract from a pamphlet lately published in London and republished at Baltimore (June, 1809) by Mr. Bernard Dornin, will place the preceding sentiment in a fair point of view:

“A better spirit than exists in the English people, never existed in any people in the world; it has been misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that they were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the commerce of America, that they were defending their sovereign by perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow subjects; their rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the vigour of France by equalling her atrocity, and they have gone on, wasting that opulence, patience and courage, which if husbanded by prudent, and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices; advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen, to make them meanly submissive; their piety is turned into persecution; their courage into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last, so let it be: that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our tears, and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar-houses and hospitals, that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, but I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to such degradations.”

BARNEY'S INVITATION.

Come all ye lads who know no fear,
To wealth and honor with me steer
In the HYDER ALI privateer,
Commanded by brave BARNEY.

She's new and true, and tight and sound,
Well rigged aloft, and all well found—
Come away and be with laurel crowned,
Away—and leave your lasses.

Accept our terms without delay,
And make your fortunes while you may,
Such offers are not every day
In the power of a jolly sailor.

Success and fame attend the brave,
But death the coward and the slave,
Who fears to plow the Atlantic wave,
To seek the bold invaders.

Come, then, and take a cruising bout,
Our ship sails well, there is no doubt,
She has been tried both in and out,
And answers expectation.

Let no proud foes whom Europe bore,
Distress our trade, insult our shore—
Teach them to know their reign is o'er,
Bold Philadelphia sailors!

We'll teach them how to sail so near,
Or to venture on the Delaware,
When we in warlike trim appear
And cruise without Henlopen.

Who cannot wounds and battle dare
Shall never clasp the blooming fair;

The brave alone their charms should share,
The brave are their protectors.

With hand and heart united all,
Prepared to conquer or to fall,
Attend, my lads, to honours call,
Embark in our HYDER ALI.

From an Eastern prince she takes her name,
Who, smit with Freedom's sacred flame,
Usurping Britons brought to shame,
His country's wrongs avenging;

See, on her stern the waving stars—
Inured to blood, inured to wars,
Come, enter quick, my jolly tars,
To scourge these warlike Britons.

Here's grog enough—then drink a bout,
I know your hearts are firm and stout;
American blood will never give out,
And often we have proved it.

Though stormy oceans round us roll,
We'll keep a firm undaunted soul,
Befriended by the cheering bowl,
Sworn foes to melancholy:

While timorous landsmen lurk on shore,
'Tis ours to go where cannons roar—
On a coasting cruise we'll go once more,
Despisers of all danger;

And Fortune still, who crowns the brave,
Shall guard us over the gloomy wave
A fearful heart betrays a knave;
Success to HYDER ALI.

1786

SONG,

On Captain Barney's Victory over the Ship General Monk. April 26, 1782.

O'er the waste of waters cruising,
Long the GENERAL MONK had reigned;
All subduing, all reducing,
None her lawless rage restrained:
Many a brave and hearty fellow
Yielding to this warlike foe,
When her guns began to bellow
Struck his humbled colours low.

But grown bold with long successes,
Leaving the wide watery way,
She, a stranger to distresses,
Came to cruise within Cape May:
“Now we soon (said captain Rogers)
“Shall their men of commerce meet;
“In our hold we'll have them lodgers,
“We shall capture half their fleet.

“Lo! I see their van appearing—
“Back our topsails to the mast—
“They toward us full are steering
“With a gentle western-blast;
“I've a list of all their cargoes,
“All their guns, and all their men:
“I am sure these modern Argo's
“Cant escape us one in ten:

“Yonder comes the charming SALLY
“Sailing with the GENERAL GREENE—
“First we'll fight the HYDER ALI,
“Taking her is taking them:
“She invites to give us battle,
“Bearing down with all her sail—

“Now, boys, let our cannon rattle!
“To take her we cannot fail.

“Our eighteen guns, each a nine pounder,
“Soon shall terrify this foe;
“We shall maul her, we shall wound her,
“Bringing rebel colours low.”
While he thus anticipated
Conquests that he could not gain,
He in the Cape May channel waited
For the ship that caused his pain.

Captain Barney then preparing,
Thus addressed his gallant crew—
“Now, brave lads, be bold and daring,
“Let your hearts be firm and true;
“This is a proud English cruiser,
“Roving up and down the main,
“We must fight her—must reduce her,
“Though our decks be strewed with slain.

“Let who will be the survivor,
“We must conquer or must die,
“We must take her up the river,
“Whate'er comes of you or I:
“Though she shews most formidable
“With her eighteen pointed nines,
“And her quarters clad in sable,
“Let us baulk her proud designs.

“With four nine pounders, and twelve sixes
“We will face that daring band;
“Let no dangers damp your courage,
“Nothing can the brave withstand.
“Fighting for your country's honour,
“Now to gallant deeds aspire;
“Helmsman, bear us down upon her,
“Gunner, give the word to fire!”

Then yard arm and yard arm meeting,
Strait began the dismal fray,
Cannon mouths, each other greeting,
Belched their smoky flames away:
Soon the langrage, grape and chain shot,
That from BARNEY'S cannons flew,
Swept the MONK, and cleared each round top,
Killed and wounded half her crew.

Captain Rogers strove to rally:
But they from their quarters fled,
While the roaring HYDER ALI
Covered o'er his decks with dead.
When from their tops their dead men tumbled,
And the streams of blood did flow,
Then their proudest hopes were humbled
By their brave inferior foe.

All aghast, and all confounded,
They beheld their champions fall,
And their captain, sorely wounded,
Bade them quick for quarters call.
Then the MONK'S proud flag descended,
And her cannon ceased to roar;
By her crew no more defended,
She confessed the contest o'er.

Come, brave boys, and fill your glasses,
You have humbled one proud foe,
No brave action this surpasses,
Fame shall tell the nations so—
Thus be Britain's woes completed,
Thus abridged her cruel reign,
'Till she ever, thus defeated,
Yields the sceptre of the main.

A PICTURE OF THE TIMES,

With Occasional Reflections.

Still round the world triumphant Discord flies,
Still angry kings to bloody contest rise;
Hosts bright with steel, in dreadful order placed,
And ships contending on the watery waste;
Distracting demons every breast engage,
Unwearied nations glow with mutual rage;
Still to the charge the routed Briton turns,
The war still rages and the battle burns;
See, man with man in deadly combat join,
See, the black navy form the flaming line;
Death smiles alike at battles lost or won—
Art does for him what Nature would have done.

Can scenes like these delight the human breast?—
Who sees with joy humanity distrest?
Such tragic scenes fierce passion might prolong,
But slighted Reason says, they must be wrong.

Cursed be the day, how bright soe'er it shined,
That first made kings the masters of mankind;
And cursed the wretch who first with regal pride
Their equal rights to equal men denied;
But cursed, o'er all, who first to slavery broke
Submissive bowed and owned a monarch's yoke:
Their servile souls his arrogance adored
And basely owned a brother for a lord;
Hence wrath, and blood, and feuds and wars began,
And man turned monster to his fellow man.

Not so that age of innocence and ease
When men, yet social, knew no ills like these;
Then dormant yet, Ambition (half unknown)
No rival murdered to possess a throne;
No seas to guard, no empires to defend—
Of some small tribe the father and the friend.
The hoary sage beneath his sylvan shade
Imposed no laws but those which reason made;

On peace, not war, on good, not ill intent,
He judged his brethren by their own consent;
Untaught to spurn those brethren to the dust;
In virtue firm, and obstinately just,
For him no navies roved from shore to shore,
No slaves were doomed to dig the glittering ore;
Remote from all the vain parade of state,
No slaves in scarlet sauntered at his gate,
Nor did his breast the angry passions tear,
He knew no murder and he felt no fear.

Was this the patriarch sage—Then turn your eyes
And view the contrast that our age supplies;
Touched from the life, we trace no ages fled,
I draw no curtain that conceals the dead;
To distant Britain let the view be cast,
And say, the present far exceeds the past;
Of all the plagues that e'er the world have cursed,
Name George, the tyrant, and you name the worst!

What demon, hostile to the human kind,
Planted these fierce disorders in the mind?
All urged alike, one phantom we pursue,
But what has war with human kind to do?
In death's black shroud our bliss can ne'er be found;
'Tis madness aims the life-destroying wound,
Sends fleets and armies to these ravaged shores
Plots constant ruin, but no peace restores.

O dire Ambition!—thee these horrors suit:
Lost to the human, she assumes the brute;
She, proudly vain, or insolently bold,
Her heart revenge, her eye intent on gold,
Swayed by the madness of the present hour
Lays worlds in ruin for extent of power;
That shining bait, which dropt in folly's way
Tempts the weak mind, and leads the heart astray!

Thou happiness! still sought but never found,
We, in a circle, chace thy shadow round;
Meant all mankind in different forms to bless,
Which yet possessing, we no more possess:

Thus far removed and painted on the eye
Smooth verdant fields seem blended with the sky,
But where they both in fancied contact join
In vain we trace the visionary line;
Still as we chace, the empty circle flies,
Emerge new mountains or new oceans rise.

[1782]

To A CONCEALED ROYALIST

On a Virulent Attack

“We have force to crumble you into dust, although you were as hard as rocks, adamant, or jasper.”

When round the bark the howling tempest raves
Tossed in the conflict of a thousand waves,
The lubber landsmen weep, complain, and sigh,
And on the pilot's skill, or heaven, rely;
Lurk in their holes, astonished and aghast,
Dreading the moment that must be their last.

The tempest done—their terror also ceases,
And up they come, and shew their shameless faces,
At once feel bold, and tell the pilot, too,
He did no more than they—themselves—could do!

A FOE TO TYRANTS! ONE your pen restores:—
There is a TYRANT WHOM YOUR SOUL ADORES:
And every line you write too plainly shows,
Your heart is hostile to that TYRANT'S FOES.

What, worse than folly, urged this genius dull
With CHURCHILL'S wreathes to shade his leaden scull:
So, midnight darkness union claims with light:
So oil and water in one mass unite:—
No more your rage in plundered verse repeat,
Sink into prose—even there no safe retreat,

REED'S patriot fame to distant years may last,
When rancorous reptiles to the dogs are cast,
Or, where oblivion spreads her weary wings,
Lost in the lumber of forgotten things;
And none shall ask, nor wish to know, nor care,
Who—what their names—or when they lived—or where.

1782

Occasioned By GENERAL WASHINGTON'S Arrival in Philadelphia,

on his way to his residence in Virginia. (December, 1783)

1

The great, unequal conflict past,
The Briton banished from our shore,
Peace, heav'n-descended, comes at last,
And hostile nations rage no more;
From fields of death the weary swain
Returning, seeks his native plain.

2

In every vale she smiles serene,
Freedom's bright stars more radiant rise,
New charms she adds to every scene,
Her brighter sun illumes our skies;
Remotest realms admiring stand,
And hail the Hero of our land:

3

He comes!—the Genius of these lands—
Fame's thousand tongues his worth confess,
Who conquered with his suffering bands,
And grew immortal by distress:
Thus calms succeed the stormy blast,
And valour is repaid at last.

4

O Washington!—thrice glorious name,
What due rewards can man decree—
Empires are far below thine aim,
And sceptres have no charms for thee;
Virtue alone has your regard,
And she must be your great reward.

5

Encircled by extorted power,
Monarchs must envy thy Retreat,
Who cast, in some ill-fated hour,
Their country's freedom at their feet;
'Twas yours to act a nobler part
For injured Freedom had thy heart.

6

For ravaged realms and conquered seas
Rome gave the great imperial prize,
And, swelled with pride, for feats like these,
Transferred her heroes to the skies:—
A brighter scene your deeds display,
You gain those heights a different way.

7

When Faction reared her bristly head,
And joined with tyrants to destroy,
Where'er you marched the monster fled,
Timorous her arrows to employ:
Hosts caught from you a bolder flame,
And despots trembled at your name.

8

Ere war's dread horrors ceased to reign,
What leader could your place supply?—
Chiefs crowded to the embattled plain,
Prepar'd to conquer or to die—

Heroes arose—but none like you
Could save our lives and freedom too.

9

In swelling verse let kings be read,
And princes shine in polished prose;
Without such aid your triumphs spread
Where'er the convex ocean flows,
To Indian worlds by seas embraced,
And Tartar, tyrant of the waste.

10

Throughout the east you gain applause,
And soon the Old World, taught by you,
Shall blush to own her barbarous laws,
Shall learn instruction from the New:
Monarchs shall hear the humble plea,
Nor urge too far the proud decree.

11

Despising pomp and vain parade,
At home you stay, while France and Spain
The secret, ardent wish conveyed,
And hailed you to their shores in vain:
In Vernon's groves you shun the throne,
Admired by kings, but seen by none.

12

Your fame, thus spread to distant lands,
May envy's fiercest blasts endure,
Like Egypt's pyramids it stands,
Built on a basis more secure;
Time's latest age shall own in you
The patriot and the statesman too.

13

Now hurrying from the busy scene,
Where thy Potowmack's waters flow,
May'st thou enjoy thy rural reign,

And every earthly blessing know;
Thus He whom Rome's proud legions swayed,
Returned, and sought his sylvan shade.

14

Not less in wisdom than in war
Freedom shall still employ your mind,
Slavery shall vanish, wide and far,
'Till not a trace is left behind;
Your counsels not bestowed in vain,
Shall still protect this infant reign.

15

So, when the bright, all-cheering sun
From our contracted view retires,
Though folly deems his race is run,
On other worlds he lights his fires!
Cold climes beneath his influence glow,
And frozen rivers learn to flow.

16

O say, thou great, exalted name!
What Muse can boast of equal lays,
Thy worth disdains all vulgar fame,
Transcends the noblest poet's praise,
Art soars, unequal to the flight,
And genius sickens at the height.

17

For States redeemed—our western reign
Restored by thee to milder sway,
Thy conscious glory shall remain
When this great globe is swept away,
And all is lost that pride admires,
And all the pageant scene expires.

1783

Cincinnatus.

On the EMIGRATION TO AMERICA and Peopling the Western Country

TO western woods, and lonely plains,
Palemon from the crowd departs,
Where Nature's wildest genius reigns,
To tame the soil, and plant the arts—
What wonders there shall freedom show,
What mighty STATES successive grow!

From Europe's proud, despotic shores
Hither the stranger takes his way,
And in our new found world explores
A happier soil, a milder sway,
Where no proud despot holds him down,
No slaves insult him with a crown.

What charming scenes attract the eye,
On wild Ohio's savage stream!
There Nature reigns, whose works outvie
The boldest pattern art can frame;
There ages past have rolled away,
And forests bloomed but to decay.

From these fair plains, these rural seats,
So long concealed, so lately known,
The unsocial Indian far retreats,
To make some other clime his own,
When other streams, less pleasing flow,
And darker forests round him grow.

Great Sire of floods! whose varied wave
Through climes and countries takes its way,
To whom creating Nature gave
Ten thousand streams to swell thy sway!

No longer shall they useless prove,
Nor idly through the forests rove;

Nor longer shall your princely flood
From distant lakes be swelled in vain,
Nor longer through a darksome wood
Advance, unnoticed, to the main,
Far other ends, the heavens decree—
And commerce plans new freights for thee.

While virtue warms the generous breast,
There heaven-born freedom shall reside,
Nor shall the voice of war molest,
Nor Europe's all-aspiring pride—
There Reason shall new laws devise,
And order from confusion rise.

Forsaking kings and regal state,
With all their pomp and fancied bliss,
The traveller owns, convinced though late,
No realm so free, so blest as this—
The east is half to slaves consigned,
Where kings and priests enchain the mind.

O come the time, and haste the day,
When man shall man no longer crush,
When Reason shall enforce her sway,
Nor these fair regions raise our blush,
Where still the African complains,
And mourns his yet unbroken chains.

Far brighter scenes a future age,
The muse predicts, these States will hail,
Whose genius may the world engage,
Whose deeds may over death prevail,
And happier systems bring to view,
Than all the eastern sages knew.

[1784]

1785

Mississippi.

LITERARY IMPORTATION.

However we wrangled with Britain awhile
We think of her now in a different stile,
And many fine things we receive from her isle;
Among all the rest,
Some demon possessed
Our dealers in knowledge and sellers of sense
To have a good bishop imported from thence.

The words of Sam Chandler were thought to be vain,
When he argued so often and proved it so plain
“That Satan must flourish till bishops should reign:”
Though he went to the wall
With his project and all,
Another bold Sammy, in bishop's array,
Has got something more than his pains for his pay.

It seems we had spirit to humble a throne,
Have genius for science inferior to none,
But hardly encourage a plant of our own:
If a college be planned,
'Tis all at a stand
'Till in Europe we send at a shameful expense,
To send us a book-worm to teach us some sense.

Can we never be thought to have learning or grace
Unless it be brought from that horrible place
Where tyranny reigns with her impudent face;
And popes and pretenders,
And sly faith-defenders
Have ever been hostile to reason and wit,
Enslaving a world that shall conquer them yet.

'Tis folly to fret at the picture I draw:
And I say what was said by a Doctor Magraw;
“If they give us their Bishops, they'll give us their law.”
How that will agree
With such people as we,
Let us leave to the learned to reflect on awhile,
And say what they think in a handsomer stile.

[w. 1786]

1788

Who laboured for the establishment of an American Episcopacy previously to the revolutionary war.

A noted practitioner in physic, formerly of N. York.

STANZAS

Written at the foot of Monte Souffriere, near the Town of Basseterre, Guadaloupe.

These Indian isles, so green and gay
In summer seas by nature placed—
Art hardly told us where they lay,
'Till tyranny their charms defaced:
Ambition here her efforts made,
And avarice rifled every shade.

Their genius wept, his sons to see
By foreign arms untimely fall,
And some to distant climates flee,
Where later ruin met them all:
He saw his sylvan offspring bleed,
That envious natures might succeed.

The CHIEF, who first o'er untried waves
To these fair islands found his way,
Departing, left a race of slaves,
Cortez, your mandate to obey,
And these again, if fame says true,
To extirpate the vulgar crew.

No more to Indian coasts confined,
The PATRON, thus, indulged his grief;

And to regret his heart resigned,
To see some proud European chief,
Pursue the harmless Indian race,
Torn by his dogs in every chace.—

Ah, what a change! the ambient deep
No longer hears the lover's sigh;
But wretches meet, to wail and weep
The loss of their dear liberty:
Unfeeling hearts possess these isles,
Man frowns—and only nature smiles.

Proud of the vast extended shores
The haughty Spaniard calls his own,
His selfish heart restrains his stores,
To other climes but scarcely known:
His Cuba lies a wilderness,
Where slavery digs what slaves possess.

Jamaica's sweet, romantic vales
In vain with golden harvests teem;
Her endless spring, her fragrant gales
More than Elysian magic seem:
Yet what the soil profusely gave
Is there denied the toiling slave.

Fantastic joy and fond belief
Through life support the galling chain;
Hope's airy prospects banish griefs,
And bring his native lands again:
His native groves a heaven display,
The funeral is the jocund day.

For man oppressed and made so base,
In vain from Jove fair virtue fell;
Distress be-glooms the toiling race,
They have no motive to excel:
In death alone their miseries end,
The tyrant's dread—is their best friend.

How great THEIR praise let truth declare,
Who touched with honour's sacred flame,
Bade freedom to some coasts repair
To urge the slaves's neglected claim;
And scorning interest's swinish plan,
Gave to mankind the rights of man.

Ascending there, may freedom's sun
In all his force serenely clear,
A long, unclouded circuit run,
Till little tyrants disappear;
And a new race, not bought or sold,
Rise from the ashes of the old.—

1787

Epistle to THE PATRIOTIC FARMER.

Thus, while new laws the stubborn STATES reclaim,
And most for pensions, some for honours aim,
YOU, who first aimed a shaft at GEORGE'S crown,
And marked the way to conquest and renown,
While from the vain, the lofty, and the proud,
Retiring to your groves, you shun the crowd,—
Can toils, like your's, in cold oblivion end,
Columbia's patriot, and her earliest friend?

Blest, doubly blest, from public scenes retired,
Where public welfare all your bosom fired;
Your life's best days in studious labours past
Your deeds of virtue make your bliss at last;
When all things fail, the soul must rest on these!—
May heaven restore you to your favourite trees,
And calm content, best lot to man assigned,
Be heaven's reward to your exalted mind.

When her base projects you beheld, with pain,
And early doomed an end to Britain's reign.

When rising nobly in a generous cause
(Sworn foe to tyrants and imported laws)
Thou DICKINSON! the patriot and the sage,
How much we owed to your convincing page:
That page—the check of tyrants and of knaves,
Gave birth to heroes who had else been slaves,
Who, taught by you, denied a monarch's sway;
And if they brought him low—you planned the way.

Though in this glare of pomp you take no part
Still must your conduct warm each generous heart:
What, though you shun the patriot vain and loud,
While hosts neglect, that once to merit bowed,
Shun those gay scenes, where recent laurels grow,
The mad PROCESSION, and the painted show;
In days to come, when pomp and pride resign,
Who would not change his proudest wreathes for thine.
In fame's fair fields such well-earned honours share,
And DICKINSON confess unrivalled there!

(1788)

The Farmer's Letters, and others of his truly valuable writings.

ON THE PROSPECT OF A REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

“Now, at the feast they plan the fall of Troy;
“The stern debate ATRIDES hears with joy.”
—Hom. Odys.

Borne on the wings of time another year
Sprung from the past, begins its proud career:
From that bright spark which first illumed these lands
See Europe kindling, as the blaze expands,
Each gloomy tyrant, sworn to chain the mind,
Presumes no more to trample on mankind:

Even potent LOUIS trembles on his throne,
The generous prince who made our cause his own,
More equal rights his injured subjects claim,
No more a country's strength—that country's shame;
Fame starts astonished at such prizes won,
And rashness wonders how the work was done.

Flushed with new life, and brightening at the view,
Genius, triumphant, moulds the world anew;
To these far climes in swift succession moves
Each art that Reason owns and sense approves.
What though his age is bounded to a span
Time sheds a conscious dignity on man,
Some happier breath his rising passions swells,
Some kinder genius his bold arm impels,
Dull superstition from the world retires,
Disheartened zealots haste to quench their fires;
One equal rule o'er twelve vast STATES extends,
Europe and Asia join to be our friends,
Our active flag in every clime displayed
Counts stars on colours that shall never fade;
A far famed chief o'er this vast whole presides
Whose motto HONOR is—whom VIRTUE guides;
His walks forsaken in Virginia's groves
Applauding thousands bow where'er HE moves,
Who laid the basis of this EMPIRE sure
Where public faith should public peace secure.

Still may she rise, exalted in her aims,
And boast to every age her patriot names,
To distant climes extend her gentle sway,
While choice—not force—bids every heart obey:
Ne'er may she fail when Liberty implores,
Nor want true valour to defend her shores,
'Till Europe, humbled, greets our western wave,
And owns an equal—whom she wished a slave.

1790

At this time, Rhode-Island was not a member of the general Confederation of the American States. (1788.)

100

THE DISTREST THEATRE.

Health to the Muse!—and fill the glass,—
Heaven grant her soon some better place,
Than earthen floor and fabric mean,
Where disappointment shades the scene:

There as I came, by rumour led,
I sighed and almost wished her dead;
Her visage stained with many a tear,
No HALLAM and no HENRY here!

But what could all their art attain?—
When pointed laws the stage restrain
The prudent Muse obedience pays
To sleepy squires, that damn all plays.

Like thieves they hang beyond the town,
They shove her off—to please the gown;—
Though Rome and Athens owned it true,
The stage might mend our morals too.

See, Mopsus all the evening sits
O'er bottled beer, that drowns his wits;
Were Plays allowed, he might at least
Blush—and no longer act the beast.

See, Marcia, now from guardian free,
Retailing scandal with her tea;—
Might she not come, nor danger fear
From Hamlet's sigh, or Juliet's tear.

The world but acts the player's part —
(So says the motto of their art)—
That world in vice great lengths is gone
That fears to see its picture drawn.

101

Mere vulgar actors cannot please;
The streets supply enough of these;
And what can wit or beauty gain
When sleepy dullness joins their train?

A State betrays a homely taste,
By which the stage is thus disgraced,
Where, drest in all the flowers of speech,
Dame virtue might her precepts teach.

Let but a dancing bear arrive,
A pig, that counts you four, or five—
And Cato, with his moral strain
May strive to mend the world in vain.

1791

Harmony Hall, at Charleston, now demolished.

Totus Mundus agit Histrionem.

The New England SABBATH-DAY CHACE.

(Written Under the Character of HEZEKIAH SALEM.)

ON a fine Sunday morning I mounted my steed
And southward from HARTFORD had meant to proceed;
My baggage was stow'd in a cart very snug,
Which RANGER, the gelding, was destined to lug;
With his harness and buckles, he loom'd very grand,
And was drove by young DARBY, a lad of the land—
On land, or on water, most handy was he,
A jockey on shore, and a sailor at sea,
He knew all the roads, he was so very keen
And the Bible by heart, at the age of fifteen.

As thus I jogg'd on, to my saddle confined,
With Ranger and Darby a distance behind;
At last in full view of a steeple we came
With a cock on the spire (I suppose he was game;
A dove in the pulpit may suit your grave people,
But always remember—a cock on the steeple)
Cries Darby—“Dear master, I beg you to stay;
Believe me, there's danger in driving this way;

102

Our deacons on Sundays have power to arrest
And lead us to church—if your honour thinks best—
Though still I must do them the justice to tell,
They would choose you should pay them the fine full as well.”

The fine (said I) Darby, how much may it be—
A shilling or sixpence?—why, now let me see,
Three shillings are all the small pence that remain
And to change a half joe would be rather PROFANE.
Is it more than three shillings, the fine that you speak on;
What say you good Darby—will that serve the deacon.

“Three shillings (cried Darby) why, master, you're jesting!
Let us luff while we can and make sure of our westing—
Forty shillings, excuse me, is too much to pay
It would take my month's wages—that's all I've to say.
By taking this road that inclines to the right
The squire and the sexton may bid us good night,
If once to old Ranger I give up the rein
The parson himself may pursue us in vain.”

“Not I, my good Darby (I answer'd the lad)
Leave the church on the left! they would think we were mad;
I would sooner rely on the heels of my steed,
And pass by them all like a Jehu indeed:—
As long as I'm able to lead in the race
Old Ranger, the gelding, will go a good pace,
As the deacon pursues, he will fly like a swallow,
And you in the cart must, undoubtedly, follow.”

Then approaching the church, as we pass'd by the door
The sexton peep'd out, with a saint or two more,
A deacon came forward and waved us his hat,
A signal to drop him some money—mind that!—

“Now, Darby, (I halloo'd) be ready to skip,
Ease off the curb bridle—give Ranger the whip:
While you have the rear, and myself lead the way,
No doctor or deacon shall catch us this day.”

By this time the deacon had mounted his poney
And chaced for the sake of our souls and—our money:
The saint, as he followed, cried—“Stop them, halloo!”
As swift as he followed, as swiftly we flew—

103

“Ah master! (said Darby), I very much fear
We must drop him some money to check his career,
He is gaining upon us and waves with his hat
There's nothing, dear master, will stop him but that.
Remember the Beaver (you well know the fable)
Who flying the hunters as long as he's able,
When he finds that his efforts can nothing avail
But death and the puppies are close to his tail,
Instead of desponding at such a dead lift
He bites off their object, and makes a free gift—
Since fortune all hope of escaping denies
Better give them a little, than lose the whole prize.”
But scarce had he spoke, when we came to a place
Whose muddy condition concluded the chace,
Down settled the cart—and old Ranger stuck fast
Aha! (said the Saint) have I catch'd ye at last?

Caetera desunt.

1790

On the Death of DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Thus, some tall tree that long hath stood
The glory of its native wood,
By storms destroyed, or length of years,
Demands the tribute of our tears.

The pile, that took long time to raise,
To dust returns by slow decays:
But, when its destined years are o'er,
We must regret the loss the more.

So long accustomed to your aid,
The world laments your exit made;
So long befriended by your art,
Philosopher, 'tis hard to part!—

104

When monarchs tumble to the ground,
Successors easily are found:
But, matchless FRANKLIN! what a few
Can hope to rival such as you,
Who seized from kings their sceptred pride,
And turned the lightning's darts aside

1790

Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis!

EPISTLE

From DR. FRANKLIN (deceased) to his Poetical Panegyrists, on some of their Absurd Compliments.

“Good Poets, who so full of pain,
Are you sincere—or do you feign?
Love for your tribe I never had,
Nor penned three stanzes, good or bad.

At funerals, sometimes, grief appears,
Where legacies have purchased tears:
'Tis folly to be sad for nought,
From me you never gained a groat.

To better trades I turned my views,
And never meddled with the muse;
Great things I did for rising States,
And kept the lightning from some pates.

This grand discovery, you adore it,
But ne'er will be the better for it:
You still are subject to those fires,
For poets' houses have no spires.

Philosophers are famed for pride;
But, pray, be modest—when I died,
No “sighs disturbed old ocean's bed,”
No “Nature wept” for Franklin dead!

105

That day, on which I left the coast,
A beggar-man was also lost:
If “Nature wept,” you must agree
She wept for him—as well as me.

There's reason even in telling lies—
In such profusion of her “sighs,”
She was too sparing of a tear—
In Carolina, all was clear:

And, if there fell some snow and sleet,
Why must it be my winding sheet?
Snows oft have cloathed the April plain,
Have melted, and will melt again.

Poets, I pray you, say no more,
Or say what Nature said before;
That reason should your pens direct,
Or else you pay me no respect.

Let reason be your constant rule,
And Nature, trust me, is no fool—
When to the dust great men she brings,
“MAKE HER DO—SOME UNCOMMON THINGS.”

1790

THE DEPARTURE:

Occasioned by the Removal of Congress from New-York to Philadelphia.—(1790.)

From Hudson's banks, in proud array,
(Too mean to claim a longer stay)
Their new ideas to improve,
Behold the generous Congress move!

Such thankless conduct much we feared,
When Timon's coach stood ready geered,

106

And HE—the foremost on the floor,
Stood pointing to the Delaware shore,

So long confined to little things,
They sigh to be where Bavius sings,
Where Sporus builds his splendid pile,
And Bufo's tawdry Seasons smile.

New chaplains, now, shall ope their jaws,
New salaries grease unworthy paws:
Some reverend man, that turtle carves,
Will fatten, while the solder starves.

The YORKER asks—but asks in vain—
“What demon bids them 'move again?
“Whoever 'moves must suffer loss,
“And rolling stones collect no moss.

“Have we not paid for chaplains' prayers,
“That heaven might smile on state affairs?—
“Put some things up, pulled others down,
“And raised our streets through half the town?

“Have we not, to our utmost, strove
“That Congress might not hence remove—
“At dull debates no silence broke,
“And walked on tip-toe while they spoke?

“Have we not toiled through cold and heat,
“To make the FEDERAL PILE complete—
“Thrown down our FORT, to give them air,
“And sent our guns, the devil knows where?

“Times change! but Memory still recalls
“The DAY, when ruffians scaled their walls—
“Sovereigns besieged by angry men,
“Mere prisoners in the town of PENN?

107

“Can they forget when, half afraid,
“The timorous COUNCIL lent no aid;
“But left them to the rogues that rob,
“The tender mercies of the mob?

“Oh! if they can, their lot is cast;
“One hundred miles will soon be passed—
“THIS DAY the FEDERAL DOME is cleared,
“To Paulus'-Hook the barge is steered,
“Where Timon's coach stands ready geered!”

[1790]

1795

See the history of those times.

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

(A Picture from the Life)

“To serve with love,
And shed your blood,
Approved may be above,
And here below
(Examples shew)
'Tis dangerous to be good.”
LORD OXFORD.

Deep in a vale, a stranger now to arms,
Too poor to shine in courts, too proud to beg,
He, who once warred on Saratoga's plains,
Sits musing o'er his scars, and wooden leg.

Remembering still the toil of former days,
To other hands he sees his earnings paid;—
They share the due reward—he feeds on praise,
Lost in the abyss of want, misfortune's shade.

Far, far from domes where splendid tapers glare,
'Tis his from dear bought peace no wealth to win,
Removed alike from courtly cringing 'squires,
The great-man's Levee, and the proud man's grin.

108

Sold are those arms which once on Britons blazed,
When, flushed with conquest, to the charge they came;
That power repelled, and Freedom's fabrick raised,
She leaves her soldier—famine and a name!

(1790)

1795

Occasioned by A LEGISLATION BILL

Proposing a Taxation upon Newspapers.

“'Tis time to tax the News, (Sangrado cries)
“Subjects were never good that were too wise:
“In every hamlet, every trifling town,
“Some sly, designing fellow sits him down,
“On spacious folio prints his weekly mess,
“And spreads around this poison of his Press.
“Hence, to the WORLD the streams of scandal flow,
“Disclosing secrets, that it should not know,
“Hence courtiers strut with libels on their backs;—
“And shall not news be humbled by a tax!

“Once ('tis most true) such papers did some good,
“When British chiefs arrived in angry mood:
“By them enkindled, every heart grew warm,
“By them excited, all were taught to arm,
“When some, retiring to Britannia's clime,
“Sat brooding o'er the vast events of time;
“Doubtful which side to take, or what to say,
“Or who would win, or who would lose the day.

“Those times are past; (and past experience shews)
“The well-born sort alone, should read the news,
“No common herds should get behind the scene
“To view the movements of the state machine:
“One paper only, filled with courtly stuff,
“One paper, for one country is enough,
“Where incense offered at Pomposo's shrine
“Shall prove his house-dog and himself divine.”

1791

109

To the PUBLIC.

This age is so fertile of mighty events,
That people complain, with some reason, no doubt,
Besides the time lost, and besides the expence,
With reading the papers they're fairly worn out:
The past is no longer an object of care,
The present consumes all the time they can spare.

Thus grumbles the reader, but still he reads on
With his pence and his paper unwilling to part.
He sees the world passing, men going and gone,
Some riding in coaches, and some in a cart:
For a peep at the farce a subscription he'll give,—
Revolutions must happen, and printers must live:

For a share of your favour we aim with the rest:
To enliven the scene we'll exert all our skill,
What we have to impart shall be some of the best,
And MULTUM IN PARVO our text, if you will;
Since we never admitted a clause in our creed,
That the greatest employment of life is—to read.

The king of the French and the queen of the North
At the head of the play, for the season, we find:
From the spark that we kindled, a flame has gone forth
To astonish the world and enlighten mankind:
With a code of new doctrines the universe rings,
And PAINE is addressing strange sermons to kings.

Thus launch'd, as we are, on the ocean of news,
In hopes that your pleasure our pains will repay,
All honest endeavours the author will use

110

To furnish a feast for the grave and the gay:
At least he'll essay such a track to pursue
That the world shall approve—and his news shall be true.

1791

LINES WRITTEN ON A PUNCHEON OF JAMAICAN SPIRITS.

Within these wooden walls, confined,
The ruin lurks of human kind;
More mischiefs here, united, dwell,
And more diseases haunt this cell
Than ever plagued the Egyptian flocks,
Or ever cursed Pandora's box.

Within these prison-walls repose
The seeds of many a bloody nose;
The chattering tongue, the horrid oath;
The fist for fighting, nothing loth;
The passion quick, no words can tame,
That bursts like sulphur into flame;
The nose with diamonds glowing red,
The bloated eye, the broken head!

Forever fastened be this door—
Confined within, a thousand more
Destructive fiends of hateful shape,
Even now are plotting an escape,
Here, only by a cork restrained,
In slender walls of wood contained,
In all their dirt of death reside
Revenge, that ne'er was satisfied;
The tree that bears the deadly fruit
Of murder, maiming, and dispute;
ASSAULT, that innocence assails,
The IMAGES of gloomy jails
The GIDDY THOUGHT on mischief bent,
The midnight hour, in folly spent,

111

ALL THESE within this cask appear,
And JACK, the hangman, in the rear!

Thrice happy he, who early taught
By Nature, ne'er this poison sought;
Who, friendly to his own repose,
Treads under foot this worst of foes,—
He, with the purling stream content,
The beverage quaffs that Nature meant;
In Reason's scale his actions weighed,
His spirits want no foreign aid—
Not swell'd too high, or sunk too low,
Placid, his easy minutes flow;
Long life is his, in vigour pass'd,
Existence, welcome to the last,
A spring, that never yet grew stale—
Such virtue lies in—ADAM'S ALE!

1792

A WARNING TO AMERICA.

Removed from Europe's feuds, a hateful scene
(Thank heaven, such wastes of ocean roll between)
Where tyrant kings in bloody schemes combine,
And each forbodes in tears, Man is no longer mine!
Glad we recall the DAY that bade us first
Spurn at their power, and shun their wars accurst;
Pitted and gaffed no more for England's glory
Nor made the tag-rag-bobtail of their story.

Something still wrong in every system lurks,
Something imperfect haunts all human works—
Wars must be hatched, unthinking men to fleece,
Or we, this day, had been in perfect peace,
With double bolts our Janus' temple shut,
Nor terror reigned through each back-woods-man's hut,
No rattling drums assailed the peasant's ear
Nor Indian yells disturbed our sad frontier,
Nor gallant chiefs, 'gainst Indian hosts combined
Scaped from the trap—to leave their tails behind.

112

Peace to all feuds!—and come the happier day
When Reason's sun shall light us on our way;
When erring man shall all his RIGHTS retrieve,
No despots rule him, and no priests deceive,
Till then, Columbia!—watch each stretch of power,
Nor sleep too soundly at the midnight hour,
By flattery won, and lulled by soothing strains,
Silenus took his nap—and waked in chains—
In a soft dream of smooth delusion led
Unthinking Gallia bowed her drooping head
To tyrants' yokes—and met such brusies there,
As now must take three ages to repair;
Then keep the paths of dear bought freedom clear,
Nor slavish systems grant admittance here.

(1792)

On the FOURTEENTH OF JULY,

a Day ever Memorable to Regenerated France.

Bright Day, that did to France restore
What priests and kings had seiz'd away,
That bade her generous sons disdain
The fetters that their fathers wore,
The titled slave, a tyrant's sway,
That ne'er shall curse her soil again!

Bright day! a partner in thy joy,
COLUMBIA hails the rising sun,
She feels her toils, her blood repaid,
When fiercely frantic to destroy,
(Proud of the laurels he had won)
The Briton, here unsheath'd his blade.

By traitors driven to ruin's brink
Fair Freedom dreads united knaves,
The world must fall if she must bleed;—

113

And yet, by heaven! I'm proud to think
The world was ne'er subdued by slaves—
Nor shall the hireling herd succeed.

Boy! fill the generous goblet high;
Success to France, shall be the toast:
The fall of kings the fates foredoom,
The crown decays, its' splendours die;
And they, who were a nation's boast,
Sink, and expire in endless gloom.

Thou, stranger, from a distant shore,
Where fetter'd men their rights avow,
Why on this joyous day so sad?
Louis insults with chains no more,—
Then why thus wear a clouded brow,
When every manly heart is glad?

Some passing days and rolling years
May see the wrath of kings display'd,
Their wars to prop the tarnish'd crown;
But orphans' groans, and widows' tears,
And justice lifts her shining blade
To bring the tottering bauble down.

(1792)

Addressed to the Aristocrats from Hispaniola.

TO CRISPIN O'CONNER,

A BACK-WOODSMAN,

(Supposed to be written by Hezekiah Salem)

Wise was your plan when twenty years ago
From Patrick's isle you first resolved to stray,
Where lords and knights, as thick as rushes grow,
And vulgar folks are in each other's way;

Where mother-country acts the step-dame's part,
Cuts off, by aid of hemp, each petty sinner,
And twice or thrice in every score of years
Hatches sad wars to make her brood the thinner.

114

How few aspire to quit the ungrateful soil
That starves the plant it had the strength to bear:
How many stay, to grieve, and fret, and toil,
And view the plenty that they must not share.

This you beheld, and westward set your nose,
Like some bold prow, that ploughs the Atlantic foam.
—And left less venturous weights, like famished crows,
To feed on hog-peas, hips, and haws, at home.

Safe landed here, not long the coast detained
Your wary steps:—but wandering on, you found
Far in the west, a paltry spot of land,
That no man envied, and that no man owned.

A woody hill, beside a dismal bog—
This was your choice; nor were you much to blame:
And here, responsive to the croaking frog,
You grubbed, and stubbed, and feared no landlord's claim.

An axe, and adze, a hammer, and a saw;
These were the tools, that built your humble shed:
A cock, a hen, a mastiff, and a cow:
These were your subjects, to this desert led.

Now times are changed—and labour's nervous hand
Bids harvests rise where briars and bushes grew;
The dismal bog, by lengthy sluices drained,
Supports no more hoarse captain Bull Frog's crew.—

Prosper your toil!—but, friend, had you remained
In lands, where starred and gartered nobles shine,
When you had, thus, to sixty years attained,
What different fate, 'Squire Crispin, had been thine!

Nine pence a day, coarse fare, a bed of boards,
The midnight loom, high rents, and excised beer;
Slave to dull squires, kings' brats, and huffish lords,
(Thanks be to Heaven) not yet in fashion here!

1792

115

CRISPIN'S ANSWER.

Much pleased am I, that you approve
Freedom's blest cause that brought me here:
Ireland I loved—but there they strove
To make me bend to KING and PEER.

I could not bow to noble knaves,
Who EQUAL RIGHTS to men deny:
Scornful, I left a land of slaves,
And hither came, my axe to ply:

The axe has well repaid my toil—
No king, no priest, I yet espy
To tythe my hogs, to tax my soil,
And suck my whiskey bottle dry.

In foreign lands what snares are laid!
There royal rights all right defeat;
They taxed my sun, they taxed my shade,
They taxed the offal that I eat.

They taxed my hat, they taxed my shoes,
Fresh taxes still on taxes grew;
They would have taxed my very nose,
Had I not fled, dear friends, to you.

1792

To SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN.

Since the day I attempted to print a gazette,
This Shylock Ap-Shenkin does nothing but fret:
Now preaching and screeching, then nibbling and scribbling,
Remarking and barking, and whining and pining,
And still in a pet,
From morning 'till night, with my humble gazette.

116

Instead of whole columns our page to abuse,
Your readers would rather be treated with News:
While wars are a-brewing, and kingdoms undoing,
While monarchs are falling, and princesses squalling,
While France is reforming, and Irishmen storming—
In a glare of such splendour, what folly to fret
At so humble a thing as a poet's GAZETTE!

No favours I ask'd from your friends in the EAST:
On your wretched soup-meagre I left them to feast;
So many base lies you have sent them in print,
That scarcely a man at our paper will squint:—
And now you begin (with a grunt and a grin,
With the bray of an ass, and a visage of brass,
With a quill in your hand and a LIE in your mouth)
To play the same trick on the men of the SOUTH!

One Printer for CONGRESS (some think) is enough,
To flatter, and lie, to palaver, and puff,
To preach up in favour of monarchs and titles,
And garters, and ribbands, to prey on our vitals:
Who knows but Pomposo will give it in fee,
Or make mister Shenkin the Grand Patentee!!!
Then take to your scrapers, ye Republican Papers,
No rogue shall go snacks—and the News-Paper Tax
Shall be puff'd to the skies, as a measure most wise—
So, a spaniel, when master is angry, and kicks it,
Sneaks up to his shoe, and submissively licks it.

1792

To MY BOOK.

Seven years are now elaps'd, dear rambling volume,
Since, to all knavish wights a foe,
I sent you forth to vex and gall 'em,
Or drive them to the shades below.

117

With spirit, still, of DEMOCRATIC proof,
And still despising Shylock's canker'd hoof:
What doom the fates intend, is hard to say,
Whether to live to some far-distant day,
Or sickening in your prime,
In this bard-baiting clime,
Take pet, make wings, say prayers, and flit away.

“Virtue, order, and religion,
“Haste, and seek some other region;
“Your plan is laid, to hunt them down,
“Destroy the mitre, rend the gown,
“And that vile hag, Philosophy, restore”—
Did ever volume plan so much before?
For seven years past, a host of busy foes
Have buzz'd about your nose,
White, black, and grey, by night and day;
Garbling, lying, singing, sighing:
These eastern gales a cloud of insects bring
That fluttering, snivelling, whimpering—on the wing—
And, wafted still as discord's demon guides,
Flock round the flame, that yet shall singe their hides.

Well!—let the fates decree whate'er they please:
Whether you're doom'd to drink oblivion's cup,
Or Praise-God Barebones eats you up,
This I can say, you've spread your wings afar,
Hostile to garter, ribbon, crown, and star;
Still on the people's, still on Freedom's side,
With full determin'd aim, to baffle every claim
Of well-born wights, that aim to mount and ride.

1792

118

To a PERSECUTED PHILOSOPHER.

AS ARISTIPPUS once, with weary feet,
Pursued his way through polish'd ATHENS street,
Minding no business but his own;
Out rush'd a set of whelps
With sun-burnt scalps,
(Black, red, and brown,)
That nipt his heels, and nibbled at his gown:

While, with his staff, he kept them all at bay
Some yelp'd aloud, some howl'd in dismal strain,
Some wish'd the sage to bark again:—
Even little Shylock seem'd to say,
“Answer us, sir, in your best way:—
“We are, 'tis true, a snarling crew,
“But with our jaws have gain'd applause,
“And—sir—can worry such as you.”

The sage beheld their spite with steady eye,
And only stopp'd to make this short reply:
“Hark ye, my dogs, I have not learn'd to yelp,
Nor waste my breath on every lousy whelp;
Much less, to write, or stain my wholesome page
In answering puppies—bursting with their rage:
Hence to your straw!—such contest I disdain:
Learn this, ('tis not amiss)
For men I keep a pen,
For dogs, a cane!

1792

TO AN ANGRY ZEALOT:

[IN ANSWER TO SUNDRY VIRULENT CHARGES.]

IF of RELIGION I have made a sport,
Then why not cite me to the BISHOP'S COURT?

119

Fair to the world let every page be set,
And prove your charges from all I've said and writ:—
What if this heart no narrow notions bind,
Its pure good-will extends to all mankind:
Suppose I ask no portion from your feast,
Nor heaven-ward ride behind your parish priest,
Because I wear not Shylock's Sunday face
Must I, for that, be loaded with disgrace?

The time has been,—the time, I fear, is now,
When holy phrenzy would erect her brow,
Round some poor wight with painted devils meet,
And worse than Smithfield blaze through every street;
But wholesome laws prevent such horrid scenes,
No more afraid of deacons and of deans,
In this new world our joyful PSALM we sing
THAT EVEN A BISHOP IS A HARMLESS THING!

1792

On the Demolition of the FRENCH MONARCHY.

From Bourbon's brow the crown remov'd,
Low in the dust is laid;
And, parted now from all she loved,
MARIA'S beauties fade:

What shall relieve her sad distress,
What power recall that former state

120

When drinking deep her seas of bliss,
She smiled, and look'd so sweet!
With aching heart and haggard eye
She views the palace, towering high,
Where, once, were passed her brightest days,
And nations stood, in wild amaze,
Louis! to see you eat.

This gaudy vision to restore
Shall fate its laws repeal,
Or cruel despots rise once more
To plan a new BASTILLE!
Will, from their sheathes, ten thousand blades
In glittering vengeance start
To mow down slaves, and slice off heads,
Taking a monarch's part?—
Ah no!—the heavens this hope refuse;
Despots! they send you no such news—
Nor Conde, fierce, nor Frederick, stout,
Nor Catherine brings this work about,
Nor Brunswick's warlike art:

Nor HE that once, with fire and sword,
This western world alarmed:
Throughout our clime whose thunders roared,
Whose legions round us swarmed—
Once more his tyrant arm invades
A race that dare be free:
His Myrmidons, with murdering blades,
In one base cause agree!—
Ill fate attend on every scheme
That tends to darken REASON'S beam:
And rising with gigantic might

121

In VIRTUE'S cause, I see unite
Worlds, under FREEDOM'S TREE!

Valour, at length, by Fortune led,
The RIGHTS OF MAN restores;
And GALLIA, now from bondage freed,
Her rising sun adores:
On EQUAL RIGHTS, her fabric planned,
Storms idly round it rave,
Nor longer breathes in Gallic land
A monarch, or a slave!
At distance far, and self-removed
From all he owned and all he loved,
See!—turned his back on Freedom's blaze,
In foreign lands the emigrant strays,
Or finds an early grave!

Enrolled with these—and close immur'd,
The gallant chief is found,
He, whom admiring crowds adored,
Through either world renowned,
Here, bold in arms, and firm in heart,
He helped to gain our cause,
Yet could not from a tyrant part,
But, turned to embrace his laws!—
Ah! hadst thou stay'd in fair Auvergne,
And Truth from PAINE vouchsafed to learn;
There, happy, honoured, and retired,
Both hemispheres had still admired,
Still crowned you with applause.

See! doomed to fare on famished steeds,
The rude Hungarians fly;
Brunswick, with drooping courage leads
Death's meagre family:

122

In dismal groups, o'er hosts of dead,
Their madness they bemoan,
No friendly hand to give them bread,
No THIONVILLE their own!
The Gaul, enraged as they retire,
Hurls at their heads his blaze of fire—
What hosts of Frederick's reeking crew
Dying, have bid the world adieu,
To dogs their flesh been thrown!
Escaped from death, a mangled train
In scatter'd bands retreat:
Where, bounding on Silesia's plain,
The Despot holds his seat;
With feeble step, I see them go
The heavy news to tell
Where Oder's lazy waters flow,
Or glides the swift Moselle;
Where Rhine his various journey moves
Through marshy lands and ruined groves,
Or, where the vast Danubian flood
(So often stained by Austrian Blood)
Foams with the autumnal swell.

But will they not some tidings bear
Of Freedom's sacred flame,
And shall not groaning millions hear
The long abandoned name?—
Through ages past, their spirits broke,
I see them spurn old laws,
Indignant, burst the Austrian yoke,
And clip the Eagle's claws:
From shore to shore, from sea to sea
They join, to set the wretched free,
And, driving from the servile court
Each titled slave—they help support
THE DEMOCRATIC CAUSE!

123

O FRANCE! the world to thee must owe
A debt they ne'er can pay:
The RIGHTS OF MAN you bid them know,
And kindle REASON'S DAY!
COLUMBIA, in your friendship blest,
Your gallant deeds shall hail—
On the same ground our fortunes rest,
Must flourish, or must fail:
But—should all Europe's slaves combine
Against a cause so fair as thine,
And ASIA aid a league so base—
Defeat would all their arms disgrace,
And Liberty Prevail!

First published in the National Gazette, Philadelphia, December 19, 1792.

Maria Antoinette, late queen of France.

Thuilleries—within view of which the royal family of France were at this time imprisoned.—1792.

Alluding to Mr. Edmund Burke's rant upon this subject.

George III.

The French Republicans.

La Fayette; at this time in the Prussian prison of Spandau.

The province of France, where the Marquis's family estate lay.

The Monarch of Prussia.

The imperial standard of Germany.

On the FRENCH REPUBLICANS.

These gallant men, that some so much despise
Did not, like mushrooms, spring up in a night:
By them instructed, France again shall rise,
And every Frenchman learn his native right.
American! when in your country's cause
You march'd, and dar'd the English lion's jaws,
Crush'd Hessian slaves, and made their hosts retreat,
Say, were you not Republican—complete?

Forever banish'd, now, be prince and king,
To Nations and to Laws our reverence due:
And let not language to my memory bring,
A word that might recall the infernal crew,
Monarch!—henceforth I blot it from my page,
Monarchs and slaves too long disgrace this age;
But thou, Republican, that SOME disclaim,
Shalt save a world, and damn a tyrant's fame.

124

Friends to Republics, cross the Atlantic brine,
Low in the dust see regal splendour laid:
Hopeless forever, sleeps the Bourbon line
Long practis'd adepts in the murdering trade!
With patriot care the nation's will expressing
Republicans shall prove all Europe's blessing,
Pull from his height each blustering Noble down
And chace all modern Tarquins from the throne.

1795

On MR. PAINE'S RIGHTS OF MAN.

Thus briefly sketched the sacred RIGHTS OF MAN,
How inconsistent with the ROYAL PLAN!
Which for itself exclusive honour craves,
Where some are masters born, and millions slaves.
With what contempt must every eye look down
On that base, childish bauble called a crown,
The gilded bait, that lures the crowd, to come,
Bow down their necks, and meet a slavish doom;
The source of half the miseries men endure,
The quack that kills them, while it seems to cure.

Roused by the REASON of his manly page,
Once more shall PAINE a listening world engage:
From Reason's source, a bold reform he brings,
In raising up mankind, he pulls down kings,
Who, source of discord, patrons of all wrong,
On blood and murder have been fed too long:
Hid from the world, and tutored to be base,
The curse, the scourge, the ruin of our race,
Their's was the task, a dull designing few,
To shackle beings that they scarcely knew,
Who made this globe the residence of slaves,
And built their thrones on systems formed by knaves
—Advance, bright years, to work their final fall,
And haste the period that shall crush them all.

125

Who, that has read and scann'd the historic page
But glows, at every line, with kindling rage,
To see by them the rights of men aspersed,
Freedom restrain'd, and Nature's law reversed,
Men, ranked with beasts, by monarchs will'd away,
And bound young fools, or madmen to obey:
Now driven to wars, and now oppressed at home,
Compelled in crowds o'er distant seas to roam,
From India's climes the plundered prize to bring
To glad the strumpet, or to glut the king.

COLUMBIA, hail! immortal be thy reign:
Without a king, we till the smiling plain;
Without a king, we trace the unbounded sea,
And traffic round the globe, through each degree;
Each foreign clime our honour'd flag reveres,
Which asks no monarch, to support the STARS:
Without a king, the laws maintain their sway,
While honour bids each generous heart obey.
Be ours the task the ambitious to restrain,
And this great lesson teach—that kings are vain;
That warring realms to certain ruin haste,
That kings subsist by war, and wars are waste:
So shall our nation, form'd on Virtue's plan,
Remain the guardian of the Rights of Man,
A vast Republic, famed through every clime,
Without a king, to see the end of time.

[1792] 1795

126

ODE TO LIBERTY.

“O Toi, dont l'auguste lumiere!” &c.

Thou LIBERTY! celestial light
So long conceal'd from Gallic lands,
Goddess, in ancient days ador'd
By Gallia's conquering bands:
Thou LIBERTY! whom savage kings
Have plac'd among forbidden things,
Tho' still averse that man be free,
Secret, they bow to Liberty—
O, to my accents lend an ear,
Blest object of each tyrant's fear,
While I to modern days recall
The Lyric muse of ancient Gaul.

Ere yet my willing voice obeys
The transports of the heart,
The goddess to my view displays
The temple rear'd in ancient days,
Fit subject for the muse's art.
Now, round the world I cast my eye,
With pain, its ruins I descry:
This temple once to Freedom rais'd
Thermopylae! in thy fam'd strait—
I see it to the dust debas'd,
And servile chains, its fate!

In those fair climes, where freedom reign'd,
Two thousand years degrade the Grecian name,
I see them still enslav'd, enchain'd;
But France from Rome and Athens caught the flame—
A temple now to heaven they raise
Where nations bound in ties of peace
With olive-boughs shall throng to praise
The gallant Gaul, that bade all discord cease.

128

Before this Pantheon, fair and tall,
The piles of darker ages fall,
And freemen here no longer trace
The monuments of man's disgrace;
Before its porch, at Freedom's tree
Exalt the CAP OF LIBERTY,
The cap that once Helvitia knew
(The terror of that tyrant crew)
And on our country's altar trace
The features of each honour'd face—
The men that strove for equal laws,
Or perish'd, martyrs in their cause.

Ye gallant chiefs, above all praise,
Ye Brutuses of ancient days!
Tho' fortune long has strove to blast,
Your virtues are repaid at last.
Your heavenly feasts awhile forbear
And deign to make my song your care;
My lyre a bolder note attains,
And rivals old Tyrtoeus' strains;
The ambient air returns the sound,
And kindles rapture all around.

With thee begins the lofty theme,
Eternal NATURE—power supreme,
Who planted FREEDOM in the mind,
The first great right of all mankind:
Too long presumptuous folly dar'd
To veil our race from thy regard;
Tyrants on ignorance form'd their plan.
And made their crimes, the crimes of man,
Let victory but befriend our cause
And reason deign to dictate laws;
At once mankind their rights reclaim
And honour pay to thy great name.—

130

But O! what cries our joys molest,
What discord drowns sweet music's feast!
What demon, from perdition, leads
Night, fire and thunder o'er our heads!
In northern realms, prepar'd for fight
A thousand savage clans unite.—
To avenge a faithless Helen's doom
All Europe's slaves, determin'd, come
Freedom's fair fabric to destroy
And wrap in flames our modern Troy!

These these are they—the murdering bands,
Whose blood, of old, distain'd our lands,
By our forefathers chac'd and slain,
The monuments of death remain:
Hungarians, wet with human blood,
Ye Saxons fierce, so oft subdued
By ancient Gauls on Gallic plains,
Dread, dread the race that still remains:
Return, and seek your dark abodes
Your dens and caves in northern woods,
Nor stay to tell each kindred ghost
What thousands from your tribes are lost.

A fiend from hell, of murderous brood,
Stain'd with a hapless husband's blood,
Unites with Danube and the Spree,
Who arm to make the French their prey:
To check their hosts and chill with fear,
Frenchmen, advance to your frontier.
There dig the ETERNAL TOMB of kings,
Or Poland's Fate each monster brings,
Mows millions down, your cause defeats,
And ISMAEL'S HORRID SCENE repeats.

132

Ye nations brave, so long rever'd,
Whom Rome, in all her glory, fear'd;
Whose stubborn souls no tyrant broke
To bow the neck to Caesar's yoke—
SCYTHIANS! whom Romans never chain'd;
GERMANS! that unsubdued remain'd,
Ah! see your sons, a sordid race,
With despots leagu'd, to their disgrace
Aid the base cause that you abhor,
And hurl on France the storm of war.

Our bold attempts shape modern Rome,
She bids her kindred despots come;
From Italy her forces draws
To waste their blood in TARQUIN'S CAUSE:
A hundred hords of foes advance,
Embodying on the verge of France;
'Mongst these, to guide the flame of war,
I see Porsenna's just a score.
While from the soil, by thousands, spring
SCEVOLA'S to destroy each king.

O Rome! what glory you consign
To those who court your ancient fame!
Frenchmen, like Romans, now shall shine,
And copying them, their ancient honours claim.
O France, my native clime, my country dear,
While, youth remains, may I behold you free,
Each tyrant crush'd, no threatening despot near
To endanger Liberty!
By you unfetter'd be all human kind,
No slaves on earth be known
And man be blest, in friendship join'd,
From Tyber to the Amazon!

1793

Which owes its origin to William Tell, the famous deliverer of Switzerland.

Catharine the 2nd, present empress of Russia, who deposed her husband Peter the 3d, and deprived him of life in July 1762, while in prison.

Two great rivers of Germany; here metaphorically designating the Austrian and Prussian powers.

The Turkish fortress of Ismael, in 1786, stormed by the Russian army. After carrying it by assault, upwards of 30,000 persons, men, women, and children were slaughtered by the Russian barbarians, in less than three hours.

An ancient king of Etruria: who took Tarquin's part against the Romans.

Scevola, who attempted the life of Porsenna in his own camp, but failed.

134

ODE

God save the Rights of Man!
Give us a heart to scan
Blessings so dear:
Let them be spread around
Wherever man is found,
And with the welcome sound
Ravish his ear.

Let us with France agree,
And bid the world be free,
While tyrants fall!
Let the rude savage host
Of their vast numbers boast—
Freedom's almighty trust
Laughs at them all!

Though hosts of slaves conspire
To quench fair Gallia's fire,
Still shall they fail:
Though traitors round her rise,
Leagu'd with her enemies,
To war each patriot flies,
And will prevail.

No more is valour's flame
Devoted to a name,
Taught to adore—
Soldiers of LIBERTY
Disdain to bow the knee,
But teach EQUALITY
To every shore.

The world at last will join
To aid thy grand design,
Dear Liberty!

135

To Russia's frozen lands
The generous flame expands:
On Afric's burning sands
Shall man be free!

In this our western world
Be Freedom's flag unfurl'd
Through all its shores!
May no destructive blast
Our heaven of joy o'ercast,
May Freedom's fabric last
While time endures.

If e'er her cause require!
Should tyrants e'er aspire
To aim their stroke,
May no proud despot daunt—
Should he his standard plant,
Freedom will never want
Her hearts of oak!

1795

On the Death of a REPUBLICAN PRINTER:

[By his Partner and Successor.]

Like Sybils' leaves, abroad he spread
His sheets, to awe the aspiring crew:
Stock-jobbers fainted while they read;
Each hidden scheme display'd to view—
Who could such doctrines spread abroad
So long, and not be clapper-claw'd!

Content with slow uncertain gains,
With heart and hand prepar'd he stood

136

To send his works to distant plains,
And hills beyond the Ohio-flood—
And, since he had no time to lose,
Preach'd whiggish lectures with his news.

Now death, with cold unsparing hand,
(At whose decree even CAPETS fall)
From life's poor glass has shook his sand,
And sent him, fainting, to the wall—
Because he gave you some sad wipes,
O Mammon! seize not thou his types.

What shall be done, in such a case?
Shall I, because my partner fails,
Call in his bull-dogs from the chace
To loll their tongues and drop their tails—
No, faith—the title-hunting crew
No longer fly than we pursue.

1793

On The ANNIVERSARY

Of the storming of the Bastille, at Paris. July 14th, 1789.

The chiefs that bow to Capet's reign,
In mourning, now, their weeds display;
But we, that scorn a monarch's chain,
Combine to celebrate the DAY
Of Freedom's birth that put the seal,
And laid in dust the proud Bastille.

To Gallia's rich and splendid crown,
This mighty Day gave such a blow
As Time's recording hand shall own
No former age had power to do:

137

No single gem some Brutus stole,
But instant ruin seiz'd the whole.

Now tyrants rise, once more to bind
In royal chains a nation freed—
Vain hope! for they, to death consign'd,
Shall soon, like perjur'd Louis, bleed:
O'er every king, o'er every queen
Fate hangs the sword, and guillotine.

“Plung'd in a gulf of deep distress
France turns her back—(so traitors say)
Kings, priests, and nobles, round her press,
Resolv'd to seize their destin'd prey:
Thus Europe swears (in arms combin'd)
Te Poland's doom is France consign'd.”

Yet those, who now are thought so low
From conquests that were basely gain'd,
Shall rise tremendous from the blow
And free TWO WORLDS, that still are chain'd,
Restrict the Briton to his isle,
And Freedom plant in every soil.

Ye sons of this degenerate clime,
Haste, arm the barque, expand the sail;
Assist to speed that golden time
When Freedom rules, and monarchs fail;
All left to France—new powers may join,
And help to crush the cause divine.

Ah! while I write, dear France ALLIED,
My ardent wish I scarce restrain,
To throw these Sybil leaves aside,
And fly to join you on the main:
Unfurl the topsail for the chace
And help to crush the tyrant race!

1793

138

To SHYLOCK AP-SHENKIN.

(IN REPLY TO BIG LOOKS AND MENACES.)

Because some pumpkin-shells and lobster claws,
Thrown o'er his garden walls by Crab-tree's duke,
Have chanc'd to light within your meagre jaws,
(A dose, at which all honest men would puke:)

Because some treasury-luncheons you have gnaw'd,
Like rats, that prey upon the public store:
Must you, for that, your crude stuff belch abroad,
And vomit lies on all that pass your door!

To knavery's tribe my verse still fatal found,
Alike to kings and cobblers gives their due:
Spruce tho' you be, your heels may drum the ground,
And make rare pass-time for the sportive crew.

Why all these hints of menace, dark and sad,
What is my crime, that that Ap-Shenkin raves?
No secret-service-money have I had
For waging two years' war with fools and knaves.

Abus'd at court, unwelcome to the GREAT—
This page of mine no well-born aspect wears:
On honest yeomen I repose its fate,
CLODHOPPER'S dollar is as good as theirs.

Why wouldst thou then with ruffian hand destroy
A wight, that wastes his ink in Freedom's cause:
Who, to the last, his arrows will employ
To publish Freedom's rights, and guard her laws!

139

O thou! that hast a heart so flinty hard
Thus oft, too oft, a poet to rebuke,
From those that rhyme you ne'er shall meet regard;
Of CRAB-TREE'S dutchy—you shall be no DUKE.

1795

To a NOISY POLITICIAN.

Since Shylock's BOOK has walk'd the circles here,
What numerous blessings to our country flow!
Whales on our shores have run aground,
Sturgeons are in our rivers found;
Nay, ships have on the Delaware sail'd,
A sight most new!
Wheat has been sown, harvests have grown,
And Shylock held strange dialogues with Sue.

On coaches, now, gay coats of arms are wore
By some, who hardly had a coat before:
Silk gowns instead of homespun, now, are seen,
And, sir, 'tis true ('twixt me and you)
Thas some have grown prodigious fat,
That were prodigious lean!

1795

Addressed to a POLITICAL SHRIMP,

or, Fly upon the Wheel.

The man that doth an Elephant pursue
Whose capture gains a mighty price,
Amidst the chace, heeds not the barking crew,
Or lesser game of rats and mice.

140

On ocean's waste who chace the royal flag
Stop not to take the privateer;
Who mean to seize the steed, neglect the nag;
No squirrel-hunter kills a deer.

Reptile! your venom ever spits in vain—
To honours's coat no drop adheres:—
To court!—return to Britain's tyrant reign,
White-wash her king, and scowr her peers.

Some scheming knaves, that strut in courtly guise,
May vile abuse, through you, impart—
But they that on no Treasury lean, despise
Your venal pen—your canker'd heart.

1795

To MY BOOK.

Unhappy Volume!—doom'd by fate
To meet with unrelenting hate
From those who can their venom spit,
Yet condescend to steal your wit:
While Shylock, with malicious spirit,
Allows you not a grain of merit,
While he an idle pomp assumes,
Let him return his borrowed plumes,
And you will find the insect creeping,
With not a feather worth the keeping.

1795

On the DEATH OF CATHARINE II.

EMPRESS OF ALL THE RUSSIAS.

Confusion to that iron sway
Which bids the brute, not man, obey,

141

And dooms him to Siberian soil,
Chains, whips, and vassalage, and toil.

This female wolf, whom wolves did nurse,
So long of polar worlds the curse,
This Catharine, skill'd in royal arts,
To the dark world at last departs.

In style, the second of her name,
She to the crown by treason came;
To Peter, drowsy, royal drone,
She gave a prison for a throne.

She would have sent her Tartar bands
To waste and ravage gallic lands,
She would have sent her legions o'er,
Columbia! to invade your shore!—

But, even in conquest, she foresaw
Destruction to despotic law;
She fear'd, in hordes returning home,
That liberty would with them come.

She fear'd the savage from the den
Would see and learn the rights of men;
And hence, in time, destruction bring
To hell's viceregents—queen and king.

No thanks to her! she fear'd her beasts,
Enslaved by kings, enslaved by priests,
Even if all freedom they o'er ran,
Would learn the dignity of man;

And kept them home, and held them there,
Oppression's iron reign to bear;
And never meet a beam of light,
Involved in worse than Zembla's night.

142

Now she is dead, and Paul will rise
As fierce as she, but not as wise;
He may his barbarous millions send,
He may the fall of France intend;

But they who see with keener eye
Will see them faint, will see them fly;
With hostile step will see them come
To turn their backs, or meet their doom.

1815

PREFATORY LINES TO A PERIODICAL PUBLICATION.

Wherever this volume may chance to be read
For the feast of good humor a table I spread;
Here are dishes by dozens; whoever will eat
Will have no just cause to complain of the treat.

If the best of the market is not to be had
I'll help you to nothing that's seriously bad;
To sense and to candor no place I refuse,
Pick here and pick there, and wherever you choose.

If I give you a frolic I hope for no fray;
My style I adapt to the taste of the day,
The feast of amusement we draw from all climes,
The best we can give in a run of hard times.

The guest, whom the pepper of satire may bite
Is wrong, very wrong, if he shows us his spite;
Should a fit of resentment be-ruffle his mind,
Sit still, I would tell him, be calm and resign'd.

In the service of freedom forever prepared,
We have done our endeavor the goddess to guard;

143

This idol, whom reason should only adore,
And banish'd from Europe, to dwell on our shore.

In a country like this, exalted by fame,
The trade of an author importance may claim
Which monarchs would never permit them to find,
Whose views are to chain and be-darken the mind.

Ye sons of Columbia! our efforts befriend;
To you all the tyrants of Europe shall bend
Till reason at length shall illume the ball
And man from his state of debasement recall.

Republics of old, that are sunk in the dust,
Could once like our own, of their liberty boast;
Both virtue and wisdom in Athens appear'd,
Each eye saw their charms, and all bosoms revered.

But as virtue and morals fell into disgrace
Pride, splendour, and folly stept into their place;
Where virtues domestic no longer were known,
Simplicity lost, and frugality flown.

Where virtues, that always a republic adorn,
Were held in contempt, or were laugh'd into scorn,
There, tyrants and slaves were the speedy effect
Of virtue dishonor'd or fall'n to neglect:

Then tyrants and slaves, the worst plagues of this earth,
From the lapse of good manners were hatch'd into birth;
And soon the base maxim all popular grew,
And allowed, that the many were made for the few.

From the fate of republics, or Athens, or Rome,
'Tis time we should learn a sad lesson at home—
From their faults and their errors a warning receive,
And steer from the shoals where they both found a grave.

144

Columbians! forever may freedom remain,
And virtue for ever that freedom maintain;
To these, all attracting, all views should submit
All labors of learning, all essays of wit.

'Tis time a new system of things was embraced
To prevail on a planet so often debased;
As here, with our freedom, that system began,
Here, at least keep it pure—for the honor of man.

1797

THE REPUBLICAN FESTIVAL:

In Compliment to Colonel Munroe, on his return to America, 1797.

AS late at a feast that she gave to MUNROE,
Her mark of attention to show,
Young liberty gave her libations to flow,
To honor where honor is due.

Return'd from the country that trampled on crowns
Where high in opinion he stood,
Dark malice attack'd him, with sneers, and with frowns,
But he met the applause of the good.

To the knight of the sceptre unwelcome he came
But freedom his merit confess'd—
He look'd at their malice, and saw it was fame,
And pity forgave them the rest.

Good humor, and pleasure, and friendship did join,
And reason the pleasure increased;
And the hero, who captured the British Burgoyne,
Presided and honor'd the feast.

On a broomstick from hell, with a quill in his hand,
Baal-Zephou came riding the air;

145

He look'd, and he saw that among the whole band
Not a single apostate was there.

Disappointed, he sigh'd, but still hover'd about
Till the toasts, with a vengeance, began—
He met the first four; when the next they gave out
To his cavern he fled back again.

In liberty's temple, the petulant cur
Could see not a man but he hates;
With a curse on her cause, and a sneer, and a spur
He fled from the frown of a GATES.

[w. 1797]

1815

Public censure, arm'd with the spear of Ithurial: may it discover the demons of tyranny, wherever they lurk, and pursue them to their native obscurity.

TO DUNCAN DOOLITTLE,

A “half-starved” Democrat.

Duncan, with truth it may be said,
Your mouth was made for rye or barley bread;
What claim have you to halls of state,
Whose business is to stand and wait,
Subserviant to command?
What right have you to white-bread, superfine,
Who were by nature destin'd for “a swine”—
As said good Edmund Burke,
The drudge of Britain's dirty work,
Whose mighty pamphlets rous'd the royal band!

When passing by a splendid dome of pride
By speculation built (and built so vast
That there a standing army might reside)
Say, Duncan, stood you not aghast,

146

When gazing up (like fox that look'd for grapes)
You saw so many things in curious shapes,
Trees rang'd along the table,
And sugar-columns, far above the rabble,
With roses blooming in October,
And wisdom's figures—dull and sober.
Ah! how you smack'd your lips, and look'd so wishful
When pigs and poultry—many a lovely dish-full,
Imparted to your nose the savoury scent
For royal noses—not for Duncan's—meant.

For things like these, you, caitiff, were not born—
A pewter spoon was for your chops intended;
Some shins of beef, and garlands made of thorn—
On things like these has Freedom's feast depended.
Though in the days of fight you musquet carried,
Or wandered up and down, a cannon-hauling,
Better you might in Jericho have tarried
And rebel-starving made your loyal calling.
Among our far-fam'd chieftains that are dead
(Like beer set by in mug without a lid,
And sure, a half-gill glass I'll put it all in)
I'll toast your health—yes, to the very brim
And to the little gaping world proclaim
You are a Hero fallen:
One of the wights who dar'd all death, or wound,
And warr'd for two and sixpence in the pound.

Of public virtue you're a rare example—
Go, mind your hoe, your pick-ax, or your spade;
A hut of six foot square shall be your “temple,”
And all your honour—strutting on parade.
But pray, beware of public good;
It will not always find you food,
And if your son should anything inherit,
Bequeath him not your public spirit,
But sixpence, to be train'd to SAWING WOOD.

1797

147

The MILLENNIUM—

To a Ranting field Orator.

With aspect wild, in ranting strain
You bring the brilliant period near,
When monarchy will close her reign
And wars and warriors disappear;
The lion and the lamb will stray,
And, social, walk the woodland way.

I fear, with superficial view
You contemplate dame nature's plan:—
She various forms of being drew,
And made the common tyrant—man:
She form'd them all with wise design,
Distinguish'd each, and drew the line.

Observe the lion's visage bold
His iron tooth, his murderous claw,
His aspect cast in anger's mould;
The strength of steel is in his paw:
Could he be meant with lambs to stray
Or feed along the woodland way?

Since first his race on earth began
War was his trade and war will be:
And when he quits that ancient plan
With milder natures to agree,
He will be changed to something new
And have some other part to do.

One system see through all this frame,
Apparent discord still prevails;
The forest yields to active flame,
The ocean swells with stormy gales;
No season did the God decree
When leagued in friendship these should be.

148

And do you think that human kind
Can shun the all-pervading law—
That passion's slave we ever find—
Who discord from their nature draw:—
Ere discord can from man depart
He must assume a different heart.

Yet in the slow advance of things
A time may come our race may rise,
By reason's aid to stretch their wings,
And see the light with other eyes;
And when the ancient mist is pass'd;
To find their nature changed at last,

The sun himself, the powers ordain,
Should in no perfect circle stray;
He shuns the equatorial plane,
Prefers an odd serpentine way,
And lessens yearly, sophists prove,
His angle in the voids above.

When moving in his ancient line,
And no oblique ecliptic near,
With some new influence he may shine
But you and I will not be here
To see the lion shed his teeth
Or kings forget the trade of death—

[w. 1797]

1815

To the SCRIBE OF SCRIBES.

BY the gods of the poets, Apollo and Jove,
By the muse who directs me, the spirits that move,
I council you, Peter, once more, to retire
Or satire shall pierce, with her arrows of fire.

149

Be careful to stop in your noisy career,
Or homeward retreat, for your danger is near:
The clouds are collecting to burst on your head,
Their sulphur to dart, or their torrents to shed.

Along with the tears, I foresee you will weep,
In the cave of oblivion I put you to sleep;—
This dealer in scandal, this bladder of gall,
This sprig of Parnassus must go to the wall.

From a star of renown in the reign of night
He has dwindled away to a little rush-light:
Then snuff it, and snuff it, while yet it remains
And PETER will leave you to snuff for your pains.—

1815

TO THE AMERICANS OF THE UNITED STATES.

First published November, 1797.

Men of this passing age!—whose noble deeds
Honour will bear above the scum of Time:
Ere this eventful century expire,
Once more we greet you with our humble rhyme:
Pleased, if we meet your smiles, but—if denied,
Yet, with YOUR sentence, we are satisfied.

Catching our subjects from the varying scene
Of human things; a mingled work we draw,
Chequered with fancies odd, and figures strange,
Such, as no courtly poet ever saw;
Who writ, beneath some GREAT MAN'S cieling placed;
Travelled no lands, nor roved the watery waste.

150

To seize some features from the faithless past;
Be this our care—before the century close:
The colours strong!—for, if we deem aright,
The coming age will be an age of prose:
When sordid cares will break the muses' dream,
And COMMON SENSE be ranked in seat supreme,

Go, now, dear book; once more expand your wings:
Still to the cause of man severely true:
Untaught to flatter pride, or fawn on kings;—
Trojan, or Tyrian, —give them both their due.—
When they are right, the cause of both we plead,
And both will please us well,—if both will read.

1797

Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.—

Virg.

To the DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY EDITORS.

On a Charge of Bribery

You, Journalists, are bribed—that's clear,
And paid French millions by the year;
We see it in the coats you wear;

Such damning, such convincing proof
Of such a charge, is strong enough—
Your suits are made of costly stuff.

Dear boys! you lodge in mansions grand—
In time you'll own six feet of land,
Where now the sexton has command.

Your lodging is in garret high;
But where your best possessions lie,
Yourselves know best—and HIM on high.

And have you had a foreign bribe?—
Then, why so lean?—shall we describe
The leanness of your honest tribe?

151

Why did you not with Tories join
To hold the British king divine—
And all his mandates very fine?

Then had your faces shined with fat—
Then had you worn the gold-laced hat—
And—said your lessons—very pat.—

Your lives are, now, continual trial,
Existence, constant self-denial,
To keep down some, who would be royal.

For public good you wear out types,
For public good you get dry wipes—
For public good you may get—stripes.

One half your time in Federal court,
On libel charge—you're made a sport—
You pay your fees—nor dare retort.—

All pleasure you are sworn to shun;
Are always cloistered, like a nun,
And glad to hide from Ragman's dun.—

All night you sit by glare of lamp,
Like Will o' Wisp in vapoury swamp,
To write of armies and the camp.—

You write—compile—compile and write,
'Till you have nearly lost your sight—
Then off to jail; and so, good night.

Turned out as poor as Christ-church rat,
Once more the trade you would be at
Which never yet made lean man fat.

You send your journals far and wide,
And though undone, and though belied;
You choose to take the patriot side.

152

Your works are in Kentucky found;
And there your politics go round—
And there your trust them many a pound.—

At home, to folks residing near,
You grant a credit, half a year;
And pine, mean while, on cakes and beer.

The time elapsed when friends should pay,
You urge your dun from day to day;
And so you must—and so you may.

One customer begins to fret,
And tells the dunner in a pet,
“Plague take the Printer and his debt:

“Ungrateful man—go hang—go burn—
“I read his paper night and morn,
“And now experience this return!

“Sir! was I not among the first
“Who did my name on paper trust,
“To help this Journalist accursed?

“Thus am I used for having signed:
“But I have spirit, he shall find—
“Ah me! the baseness of mankind!”

Thus, on you strive with constant pain,
The kindest tell you, call again!—
And you their humble dupe remain.

Who aims to prosper—should be sold—
If bribes are offered, take the gold,
Nor live to be forever fooled.

SALEM 1809

153

REFLECTIONS

On the Mutability of Things—1798.

The time is approaching, deny it who may,
The days are not very remote,
When the pageant that glitter'd for many a day,
On the stream of oblivion will float.

The times are advancing when matters will turn,
And some, who are now in the shade,
And pelted by malice, or treated with scorn,
Will pay, in coin that was paid:

The time it will be, when the people aroused,
For better arrangements prepare,
And firm to the cause, that of old they espoused,
Their steady attachment declare:

When tyrants will shrink from the face of the day,
Or, if they presume to remain,
To the tune of peccavi, a solo will play,
And lower the royalty strain:

When government favors to flattery's press
Will halt on their way from afar,
And people will laugh at the comical dress
Of the knights of the garter and star:

When a monarch, new fangled, with lawyer and scribe,
In junto will cease to convene,
Or take from old England a pitiful bribe,
To pamper his “highness serene;”

When virtue and merit will have a fair chance
The loaves and the fishes to share,
And Jefferson, you to your station advance,
The man from the president's chair:

154

When honesty, honor, experience, approved,
No more in disgrace will retire;
When fops from the places of trust are removed
And the leaders of faction retire.

[w. 1798]

1815

The POLITICAL WEATHERCOCK.

'Tis strange that things upon the ground
Are commonly most steady found
While those in station proud
Are turned and twirled, or twist about,
Now here and there, now in or out,
Mere playthings to a cloud.

See yonder influential man,
So late the stern Republican
While interest bore him up;
See him recant, abjure the cause,
See him support tyrannic laws,
The dregs of slavery's cup!

Thus, on yon' steeple towering high,
Where clouds and storms distracted fly,
The weather-cock is placed;
Which only while the storm does blow
Is to one point of compass true,
Then veers with every blast.

But things are so appointed here
That weather-cocks on high appear,
On pinnacle displayed,
While SENSE, and WORTH, and reasoning wights,
And they who plead for HUMAN RIGHTS,
Sit humble in the shade.

1809

155

REFLECTIONS

ON THE GRADUAL PROGRESS OF NATIONS FROM DEMOCRATICAL STATES TO DESPOTIC EMPIRES.

Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!
Virgil.

OH fatal day! when to the Atlantic shore
European despots sent the doctrine o'er,
That man's vast race was born to lick the dust;
Feed on the Winds, or toil through life accurst;
Poor and despised, that rulers might be great
And swell to monarchs, to devour the state.

Whence came these ills, or from what causes grew,
This vortex vast, that only spares the few,
Despotic sway, where every plague combined,
Distracts, degrade, and swallows up mankind;
Takes from the intellectual sun its light,
And shrouds the world in universal night?

Accuse not nature for the dreary scene,
That glooms her stage or hides her heaven serene,
She, equal still in all her varied ways,
An equal blessing to the world displays.
The suns that now on northern climates glow,
Will soon retire to melt Antarctic snow,
The seas she robb'd to form her clouds and rain,
Return in rivers to that source again;
But man, wrong'd man, borne down, deceived and vex'd,
Groans on through life, bewilder'd and perplex'd;
No suns on him but suns of misery shine,
Now march'd to war, now grovelling in the mine.
Chain'd, fetter'd, prostrate, sent from earth a slave,
To seek rewards in worlds beyond the grave.

If in her general system, just to all,
We nature an impartial parent call,

156

Why did she not on man's whole race bestow,
Those fine sensations angels only know;
Who, sway'd by reason, with superior mind
In nature's state all nature's blessings find,
Which shed through all, does all their race pervade,
In streams not niggard by a despot made?

Leave this a secret in great nature's breast,
Confess that all her works tend to the best,
Or own that man's neglected culture here
Breeds all the mischiefs that we feel or fear.
In all, except the skill to rule her race,
Man, wise and skillful, gives each part its place:
Each nice machine he plans, to reason true,
Adapting all things to the end in view,
But taught in this, the art himself to rule
His sense is folly, and himself a fool.

Where social strength resides, there rests, 'tis plain,
The power, mankind to govern and restrain:
This strength is not but in the social plan
Controling all, the common good of man,
That power concentred by the general voice,
In honest men, an honest people's choice,
With frequent change, to keep the patriot pure,
And from vain views of power the heart secure:
Here lies the secret, hid from Rome or Greece,
That holds a state in awe, yet holds in peace.

See through the world, in ages now retired,
Man foe to man, as policy required:
At some proud tyrant's nod what millions rose,
To extend their sway, and make a world their foes.
View Asia ravaged, Europe drench'd with blood,
In feuds whose cause no nation understood.
The cause we fear, of so much misery sown,
Known at the helm of state, and there alone.

157

Left to himself, wherever man is found,
In peace he aims to walk life's little round;
In peace to sail, in peace to till the soil,
Nor force false grandeur from a brother's toil.
All but the base, designing, scheming, few,
Who seize on nations with a robber's view,
With crowns and sceptres awe his dazzled eye,
And priests that hold the artillery of the sky;
These, these, with armies, navies, potent grown,
Impoverish man and bid the nations groan.
These with pretended balances of states
Keep worlds at variance, breed eternal hates,
Make man the poor base slave of low design,
Degrade his nature to its last decline,
Shed hell's worse blots on his exalted race,
And make them poor and mean, to make them base.

Shall views like these assail our happy land,
Where embryo monarchs thirst for wide command,
Shall a whole nation's strength and fair renown
Be sacrificed, to prop a tottering throne,
That, ages past, the world's great curse has stood,
Has throve on plunder, and been fed on blood.—
Americans! will you control such views?
Speak—for you must—you have no hour to lose.

1815

STANZAS

TO AN ALIEN, WHO AFTER A SERIES OF PERSECUTIONS EMIGRATED TO THE SOUTHWESTERN COUNTRY.—1799—

Remote, beneath a sultry star
Where Mississippi flows afar
I see you rambling, God knows where.

Sometimes, beneath a cypress bough
When met in dreams, with spirits low,
I long to tell you what I know.

158

How matters go, in this our day,
When monarchy renews her sway,
And royalty begins her play.

I thought you wrong to come so far
Till you had seen our western star
Above the mists ascended clear.

I thought you right, to speed your sails
If you were fond of loathesome jails,
And justice with uneven scales.

And so you came and spoke too free
And soon they made you bend the knee,
And lodged you under lock and key.

Discharged at last, you made your peace
With all you had, and left the place
With empty purse and meagre face.—

You sped your way to other climes
And left me here to teaze with rhymes
The worst of men in worst of times.

Where you are gone the soil is free
And freedom sings from every tree,
“Come quit the crowd and live with me!”

Where I must stay, no joys are found;
Excisemen haunt the hateful ground,
And chains are forged for all around.

The scheming men, with brazen throat,
Would set a murdering tribe afloat
To hang you for the lines you wrote.

If you are safe beyond their rage
Thank heaven, and not our ruling sage,
Who shops us up in jail and cage.

159

Perdition seize that odious race
Who, aiming at distinguish'd place,
Would life and liberty efface;

With iron rod would rule the ball
And, at their shrine, debase us all,
Bid devils rise and angels fall.

Oh wish them ill, and wish them long
To be as usual in the wrong
In scheming for a chain too strong.

So will the happy time arrive
When coming home, if then alive,
You'll see them to the devil drive.

[w. 1799]

1815

STANZAS

To the memory of General WASHINGTON, who died December 14, 1799.

Terra tegit, populus moeret, coelum habet!

Departing with the closing age
To virtue, worth, and freedom true,
The chief, the patriot, and the sage
To Vernon bids his last adieu:
To reap in some exalted sphere
The just rewards of virtue here.

Thou, Washington, by heaven design'd
To act a part in human things
That few have known among mankind,
And far beyond the task of kings;
We hail you now to heaven received,
Your mighty task on earth achieved.

160

While sculpture and her sister arts,
For thee their choicest wreaths prepare,
Fond gratitude her share imparts
And begs thy bones for burial there;
Where, near Virginia's northern bound
Swells the vast pile on federal ground.

To call from their obscure abodes
The grecian chief, the roman sage,
The kings, the heroes, and the gods
Who flourish'd in time's earlier age,
Would be to class them not with you,—
Superior far, in every view.

Those ancients of ferocious mould,
Blood their delight, and war their trade,
Their oaths profaned, their countries sold,
And fetter'd nations prostrate laid;
Could these, like you, assert their claim
To honor and immortal fame?

Those monarchs, proud of pillaged spoils,
With nations shackled in their train,
Returning from their desperate toils
With trophies,—and their thousands slain;
In all they did no traits are known
Like those that honor'd Washington.

Who now will save our shores from harms,
The task to him so long assign'd?
Who now will rouse our youth to arms
Should war approach to curse mankind?
Alas! no more the word you give,
But in your precepts you survive.

Ah, gone! and none your place supply,
Nor will your equal soon appear;

161

But that great name can only die
When memory dwells no longer here,
When man and all his systems must
Dissolve, like you, and turn to dust.

[w. 1799]

1815

STANZAS

Upon the Same Subject with the Preceding.

The chief who freed these suffering lands
From Britain's bold besieging bands,
The hero, through all countries known,—
The guardian genius of his OWN,

Is gone to that celestial bourne
From whence no traveller can return,
Where Scipio and where Trajan went;
And heaven reclaims the soul it lent.

Each heart with secret wo congeals;
Down the pale cheek moist sorrow steals,
And all the nobler passions join
To mourn, remember, and resign.

O ye, who carve the marble bust
To celebrate poor human dust,
And from the silent shades of death
Retrieve the form but not the breath,

Vain is the attempt by force of art
To impress his image on the heart:
It lives, it glows, in every breast,
And tears of millions paint it best.

Indebted to his guardian care,
And great alike in peace and war,
The loss they feel these STATES deplore,—
Their friend .... their father .... is no more.

162

What will they do to avow their grief?
No sighs, no tears, afford relief;
Dark mourning weeds but ill express
The poignant wo that all confess;
Nor will the monumental stone
Assuage one tear—relieve one groan.

O Washington! thy honor'd dust
To parent nature we entrust;
Convinced that your exalted mind
Still lives, but soars beyond mankind,
Still acts in virtue's sacred cause,
Nor asks from man his vain applause.

In raptures with a theme so great,
While thy famed actions they relate,
Each future age from thee shall know
All that is good and great below;
Shall glow with pride to hand thee down
To latest time, to long renown,
The brightest name on freedom's page,
And the first honor of our age.

1815

STANZAS

Occasioned by certain absurd, extravagant, and even blasphemous panegyrics and encomiums on the character of the late gen. Washington, that appeared in several pamphlets, journals, and other periodical publications, in January, 1800.

NO tongue can tell, no pen describe
The phrenzy of a numerous tribe,
Who, by distemper'd fancy led,
Insult the memory of the dead.

163

Of old, there were in every age
Who stuff'd with gods the historian's page,
And raised beyond the human sphere
Some who, we know, were mortal here.

Such was the case, we know full well,
When darkness spread her pagan spell;
Mere insects, born for tombs and graves,
They changed into celestial knaves;
Made some, condemn'd to tombs and shrouds,
Lieutenant generals in the clouds.

In journals, meant to spread the news,
From state to state—and we know whose—
We read a thousand idle things
That madness pens, or folly sings.

Was, Washington, your conquering sword
Condemn'd to such a base reward?
Was trash, like that we now review,
The tribute to your valor due?

One holds you more than mortal kind,
One holds you all ethereal mind,
This puts you in your saviour's seat,
That makes you dreadful in retreat.

One says you are become a star,
One makes you more resplendent, far;
One sings, that, when to death you bow'd,
Old mother nature shriek'd aloud.

We grieve to see such pens profane
The first of chiefs, the first of men.—
To Washington—a man—who died,
As abba father well applied?

Absurdly, in a frantic strain,
Why ask him not for sun and rain?—

164

We sicken at the vile applause
That bids him give the ocean laws.

Ye patrons of the ranting strain,
What temples have been rent in twain?
What fiery chariots have been sent
To dignify the sad event?—

O, ye profane, irreverent few,
Who reason's medium never knew:
On you she never glanced her beams;
You carry all things to extremes.

Shall they, who spring from parent earth,
Pretend to more than mortal birth?
Or, to the omnipotent allied,
Control his heaven, or join his side?

O, is there not some chosen curse,
Some vengeance due, with lightning's force
That far and wide destruction spreads,
To burst on such irreverent heads!

Had they, in life, be-praised him so,
What would have been the event, I know
He would have spurn'd them, with disdain,
Or rush'd upon them, with his cane.

He was no god, ye flattering knaves,
He own'd no world, he ruled no waves;
But—and exalt it, if you can,
He was the upright, HONEST MAN.

This was his glory, this outshone
Those attributes you doat upon:
On this strong ground he took his stand,
Such virtue saved a sinking land.

[w. 1800]

1815

165

ON THE ABUSE OF HUMAN POWER

As exercised over opinion.

What human power shall dare to bind
The mere opinions of the mind?
Must man at that tribunal bow
Which will no range to thought allow,
But his best powers would sway or sink,
And idly tells him what to THINK?

Yes! there are such, and such are taught
To fetter every power of thought;
To chain the mind, or bend it down
To some mean system of their own,
And make religion's sacred cause
Amenable to human laws.

Has human power the simplest claim
Our hearts to sway, our thoughts to tame;
Shall she the rights of heaven assert,
Can she to falsehood truth convert,
Or truth again to falsehood turn,
And at the test of reason spurn?

All human sense, all craft must fail
And all its strength will nought avail,
When it attempts with efforts blind
To sway the independent mind,
Its spring to break, its pride to awe,
Or give to private judgment, law.

Oh impotent! and vile as vain,
They, who would native thought restrain!
As soon might they arrest the storm
Or take from fire the power to warm,
As man compel, by dint of might,
Old darkness to prefer to light.

166

No! leave the mind unchain'd and free,
And what they ought, mankind will be,
No hypocrite, no lurking fiend,
No artist to some evil end,
But good and great, benign and just,
As God and nature made them first.

1815

STANZAS

On the decease of Thomas Paine, who died at New York, on the 8th of June, 1809.

Princes and kings decay and die
And, instant, rise again:
But this is not the case, trust me,
With men like THOMAS PAINE.

In vain the democratic host
His equal would attain:
For years to come they will not boast
A second Thomas Paine.

Though many may his name assume;
Assumption is in vain;
For every man has not his plume—
Whose name is Thomas Paine.

Though heaven bestow'd on all its sons
Their proper share of brain,
It gives to few, ye simple ones,
The mind of Thomas Paine.

To tyrants and the tyrant crew,
Indeed, he was the bane;
He writ, and gave them all their due,
And signed it,—THOMAS PAINE.

167

Oh! how we loved to see him write
And curb the race of Cain!
They hope and wish that Thomas P---
May never rise again.

What idle hopes!—yes—such a man
May yet appear again.—
When they are dead, they die for aye:
—Not so with Thomas Paine.

1815

On the SYMPTOMS OF HOSTILITIES.

—1809—

But will they once more be engaged in a war,
Be fated to discord again?
A peace to the nations will nothing restore
But the challenge of death and a deluge of gore!
A modern crusade
Is undoubtedly made:—
With treaties rejected, and treaties renew'd,
A permanent treaty they never conclude.

And who is to blame? we submissively ask—
Did nature predestine this curse to mankind;
Or is it the cruel detestable task
That tyrants impose, with their minions combined?
We are anxious to know
The source of our wo
In a world where the blessings of nature abound
Why discord, the bane of her blessings, is found.

Must our freedom, our labors, our commerce, our all
Be tamely surrender'd, to tyrants convey'd;

168

Must the flag of the country disgracefully fall,
To be torn by the dogs of the slaughtering trade?
Does no one reply,
With a tear in his eye,
It must be the case, if we do not resent
What monarchs have menaced and tyranny meant.

Not a ship, or a barque, that departs from the shore
But her cargo is plunder'd, her sailors are slain,
Or arriving in England, we see them no more,
Condemn'd in the court of deceit and chicane,
Where their wicked decrees
And their costs and their fees
Have ruin'd the merchant—mechanics half fed,
And sailors uncaptured are begging their bread.

To reason with tyrants is surely absurd;
To argue with them is to preach to the deaf:
They argue alone by the length of the sword;
Their honor the same as the word of a thief.
In such to confide
When a cause they decide,
Is the wolf and the lamb (if the tale we recall)
Where the weakest and meekest must go the wall.

But an englishman's throat is expanded so wide
Not the ocean itself is a mess for his maw:
And missions there are, and a scoundrel employ'd
To divide, and to rule by the florentine law:
New-England must join
In the knavish design,
As some have predicted to those who believe 'em;
—The event is at hand—may the devil deceive 'em.

With an empire at sea and an empire on land,
And the system projected, monopolization,

169

The western republic no longer will stand
Than answers the views of a desperate nation,
Who have shackled the east,
Made the native a beast,
And are scheming to give us—the matter is clear—
A man of their own for the president's chair.

Then arouse from your slumbers, ye men of the west,
Already the indian his hatchet displays;
Ohio's frontier, and Kentucky distrest;
The village, and cottage, are both in a blaze:—
Then indian and english
No longer distinguish,
They bribe, and are bribed, for a warfare accurst;
Of the two, we can hardly describe which is worst.

In the court of king Hog was a council convened,
In which they agreed we are growing too strong:
They snuffed and grunted, and loudly complained
The sceptre would fall, if they suffer'd it long;
To cut up our trade
Was an object, they said,
The nearest and dearest of all in their view;
Not a fish should be caught if old England said, No!

Then arouse from your slumbers, ye men of the west,
A war is approaching, there's room to suppose;
The rust on your guns we abhor and detest,
So brighten them up—we are coming to blows
With the queen of the ocean
The prop of devotion,
The bulwark of all that is truly divine;
A motto she often has put on her sign.

[w. 1809]

1815

Nicholas Machiavel's maxim, divide et impera; divide and govern. He was a native of Florence, in Italy.

170

LINES ADDRESSED TO MR. JEFFERSON,

On his retirement from the presidency of the United States.—1809.

PRAESENTI TIBI MATUROS LARGIMUR HONORES—
Hor.

To you, great sir, our heartfelt praise we give,
And your ripe honors yield you—while you live.

AT length the year, which marks his course, expires,
And JEFFERSON from public life retires;
That year, the close of years, which own his claim,
And give him all his honors, all his fame.
Far in the heaven of fame I see him fly,
Safe in the realms of immortality:
On EQUAL WORTH his honor'd mantle falls,
Him, whom Columbia her true patriot calls;
Him, whom we saw her codes of freedom plan,
To none inferior in the ranks of man.

When to the helm of state your country call'd
No danger awed you and no fear appall'd;
Each bosom, faithful to its country's claim,
Hail'd JEFFERSON, that long applauded name;
All, then, was dark, and wrongs on wrongs accrued
Our treasures wasted, and our strength subdued;
What seven long years of war and blood had gain'd,
Was lost, abandon'd, squander'd, or restrain'd:
Britania's tools had schemed their easier way,
To conquer, ruin, pillage, or betray;
Domestic traitors, with exotic, join'd,
To shackle this last refuge of mankind;
Wars were provoked, and France was made our foe,
That George's race might govern all below,

171

O'er this wide world, uncheck'd, unbounded, reign,
Seize every clime, and subjugate the main.

All this was seen—and rising in your might,
By genius aided, you reclaim'd our right,
That RIGHT, which conquest, arms, and valor gave
To this young nation—not to live a slave.

And what but toil has your long service seen?
Dark tempests gathering o'er a sky serene—
For wearied years no mines of wealth can pay,
No fame, nor all the plaudits of that day,
Which now returns you to your rural shade,
The sage's heaven, for contemplation made,
Who, like the ROMAN, in their country's cause
Exert their valor, or enforce its laws,
And late retiring, every wrong redress'd,
Give their last days to solitude and rest.

This great reward a generous nation yields—
REGRET attends you to your native fields;
Their grateful thanks for every service done,
And hope, your thorny race of care is run.

From your sage counsels what effects arise!
The vengeful briton from our waters flies;
His thundering ships no more our coasts assail,
But seize the advantage of the western gale.
Though bold and bloody, warlike, proud, and fierce,
They shun your vengeance for a MURDERED PEARCE,
And starved, dejected, on some meagre shore,
Sigh for the country they shall rule no more.

Long in the councils of your native land,
We saw you cool, unchanged, intrepid, stand:
When the firm CONGRESS, still too firm to yield,
Stay'd masters of the long contested field,

172

Your wisdom aided, what their counsels framed—
By you the murdering savages were tamed—
That INDEPENDENCE we had sworn to gain,
By you asserted (nor DECLARED in vain)
We seized, triumphant, from a tyrant's throne,
And Britain totter'd when the work was done.

You, when an angry faction vex'd their age,
Rose to your place at once, and check'd their rage;
The envenom'd shafts of malice you defied,
And turn'd all projects of revolt aside:—
We saw you libell'd by the worst of men,
While hell's red lamp hung quivering o'er his pen,
And fiends congenial every effort try
To blast that merit which shall never die—

These had their hour, and traitors wing'd their flight,
To aid the screechings of distracted night.
Vain were their hopes—the poison'd darts of hell,
Glanced from your flinty shield, and harmless fell.

All this you bore—beyond it all you rose,
Nor ask'd despotic laws to crush your foes.
Mild was your language, temperate though severe;
And not less potent than ITHURIEL'S SPEAR
To touch the infernals in their loathesome guise,
Confound their slanders and detect their lies.

All this you braved—and, now, what task remains,
But silent walks on solitary plains:
To bid the vast luxuriant harvest grow,
The slave be happy and secured from wo—
To illume the statesmen of the times to come
With the bold spirit of primeval Rome;
To taste the joys your long tried service brings,
And look, with pity, on the cares of kings:—
Whether, with NEWTON, you the heavens explore,
And trace through nature the creating power,
Or, if with mortals you reform the age,

173

(Alike, in all, the patriot and the sage)
May peace and soft repose, attend you, still,
In the lone vale, or on the cloud-capp'd hill,
While smiling plenty decks the abundant plain,
And hails ASTREA to the world again.

[w. 1809]

1815

On the BRITISH COMMERCIAL DEPREDATIONS.

AS gallant ships as ever ocean stemm'd—
A thousand ships are captured, and condemn'd!
Ships from our shores, with native cargoes fraught,
And sailing to the very shores they ought:
And yet at peace!—the wrong is past all bearing;
The very comets are the war declaring:
Six thousand seamen groan beneath your power,
For years immured, and prisoners to this hour:

Then England come! a sense of wrong requires
To meet with thirteen stars your thousand fires;
On your own seas the conflict to sustain,
Or drown them, with your commerce in the main!

True do we speak, and who can well deny,
That England claims all water, land, and sky
Her power expands—extends through every zone,
Nor bears a rival—but must rule alone.
To enforce her claims, a thousand sails unfurl'd
Pronounce their home the cock-pit of the world;
The modern Tyre, whose fiends and lions prowl,
A tyrant navy, which in time must howl.

174

Heaven send the time—the world obeys her nod:
Her nods, we hope, the sleep of death forbode;
Some mighty change, when plunder'd thrones agree,
And plunder'd countries, to make commerce free.

1815

A large comet appeared for several months, about this time.

Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, &c.—
Ezekiel.

MILITARY RECRUITING

TO A RECRUIT FOND OF SEGAR SMOKING.—

—Ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.—
Hor.

When first I arrived to the age of a man
And met the distraction of care,
As the day to a close rather sorrowful ran
Yet I smiled and I smoked my segar:
O, how sweet did it seem
What a feast, what a dream
What a pleasure to smoke the segar!

In vain did the din of the females assail
Or the noise of the carts in the street,
With a spanish segar and a pint of good ale
I found my enjoyment complete:
Old care I dismiss'd
While I held in my fist
The pitcher, and smoked the segar.

What a world are we in, if we do not retire,
And, at times, to the tavern repair
To read the gazette, by a hickory fire,
With a sixpence or shilling to spare,
To handle the glass
And an evening pass
With the help of a lively segar.

The man of the closet, who studies and reads,
And prepares for the wars of the bar;

175

The priest who harangues, or the lawyer who pleads,
What are they without the segar?
What they say may be right,
But they give no delight
Unless they have smoked the segar.

The farmer still plodding, who follows his plough,
A calling, the first and the best,
Would care not a fig for the sweat on his brow
If he smoked a segar with the rest:
To the hay-loft alone
I would have it unknown,
For there a segar I detest.

The sailor who climbs and ascends to the yard
Bespatter'd and blacken'd with tar,
Would think his condition uncommonly hard
If he did not indulge the segar,
To keep them in trim
While they merrily swim
On the ocean, to countries afar.

The soldier untry'd in the midst of the smoke,
The havoc and carnage of war,
Would stand to his cannon, as firm as a rock,
Would they let him but smoke his segar:
Every gun in the fort
Should make its report
From the fire which illumes the segar.

Come, then, to the tavern, ye sons of the sword,
No fear of a wound or a scar;
If your money is gone, your account will be scored
By the lady who tends at the bar:
And this I can say,
Not a cent need you pay
For the use of the social segar.

1815

176

On the LAKE EXPEDITIONS.

Where Niagara's awful roar
Convulsive shakes the neighboring shore,
Alarm'd I heard the trump of war,
Saw legions join!

And such a blast, of old, they blew,
When southward from St. Lawrence flew
The indian, to the english true,
Led by Burgoyne.

United then, they sail'd Champlain,
United now, they march again,
A land of freedom to profane
With savage yell.

For this they scour the mountain wood;
Their errand, death, their object, blood:
For this they stem thy subject flood,
O stream Sorel!

Who shall repulse the hireling host,
Who force them back through snow and frost,
Who swell the lake with thousands lost,
Dear freedom? say!—

Who but the sons of freedom's land,
Prepared to meet the bloody band;
Resolved to make a gallant stand
Where lightnings play.

Their squadrons, arm'd with gun and sword,
Their legions, led by knight and lord
Have sworn to see the reign restored
Of George, the goth;

177

Whose mandate, from a vandal shore,
Impels the sail, directs the oar,
And, to extend the flames of war,
Employs them both.

1815

The BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE

September 10, 1813

“TO clear the lake of Perry's fleet
And make his flag his winding sheet
This is my object—I repeat—”
—Said Barclay, flush'd with native pride,
To some who serve the british crown:—
But they, who dwell beyond the moon,
Heard this bold menace with a frown,
Nor the rash sentence ratified.

Ambition so bewitch'd his mind,
And royal smiles had so combined
With skill, to act the part assign'd
He for no contest cared, a straw;
The ocean was too narrow far
To be the seat of naval war;
He wanted lakes, and room to spare,
And all to yield to Britain's law.

And thus he made a sad mistake;
Forsooth he must possess the lake,
As merely made for England's sake
To play her pranks and rule the roast;
Where she might govern, uncontrol'd,
An unmolested empire hold,
And keep a fleet to fish up gold,
To pay the troops of George Provost.

178

The ships approach'd, on either side,
And Erie, on his bosom wide
Beheld two hostile navies ride,
Each for a combat well prepared:
The lake was smooth, the sky was clear,
The martial drum had banish'd fear,
And death and danger hover'd near,
Though both were held in disregard.

From lofty heights their colors flew,
And Britain's standard all in view,
With frantic valor fired the crew
That mann'd the guns of queen Charlotte.
“And we must Perry's squadron take,
And England shall command the lake;—
And you must fight for Britain's sake,
(Said Barclay) sailors, will you not?”

Assent they gave with heart and hand;
For never yet a braver band
To fight a ship, forsook the land,
Than Barclay had on board that day;—
The guns were loosed the game to win,
Their muzzles gaped a dismal grin,
And out they pulled their tompion pin,
The bloody game of war to play.

But Perry soon, with flowing sail,
Advanced, determined to prevail,
When from his bull-dogs flew the hail
Directed full at queen Charlotte.
His wadded guns were aim'd so true,
And such a weight of ball they threw,
As, Barclay said, he never knew
To come, before, so scalding hot!

But still, to animate his men
From gun to gun the warrior ran

179

And blazed away and blazed again—
Till Perry's ship was half a wreck:
They tore away both tack and sheet,—
Their victory might have been complete,
Had Perry not, to shun defeat
In lucky moment left his deck.

Repairing to another post,
From another ship he fought their host
And soon regain'd the fortune lost,
And down, his flag the briton tore:
With loss of arm and loss of blood
Indignant, on his decks he stood
To witness Erie's crimson flood
For miles around him, stain'd with gore!

Thus, for dominion of the lake
These captains did each other rake,
And many a widow did they make;—
Whose is the fault, or who to blame?—
The briton challenged with his sword,
The yankee took him at his word,
With spirit laid him close on board—
They're ours—he said—and closed the game.

1815

The VOLUNTEER'S MARCH.

July, 1814.

Dulce est pro patria mori.

YE, whom Washington has led,
Ye, who in his footsteps tread,

180

Ye, who death nor danger dread,
Haste to glorious victory.

Now's the day and now's the hour;
See the British navy lour,
See approach proud George's power,
England! chains and slavery.

Who would be a traitor knave?
Who would fill a coward's grave?
Who so base to be a slave?
Traitor, coward, turn and flee.

Meet the tyrants, one and all;
Freemen stand, or freemen fall—
At Columbia's patriot call,
At her mandate, march away!

Former times have seen them yield,
Seen them drove from every field,
Routed, ruin'd and repell'd—
Seize the spirit of those times!

By oppression's woes and pains—
By our sons in servile chains
We will bleed from all our veins
But they shall be—shall be free.

O'er the standard of their power
Bid Columbia's eagle tower,
Give them hail in such a shower
As shall blast them—horse and man!

Lay the proud invaders low,
Tyrants fall in every foe;
Liberty's in every blow,
Forward! let us do or die.

1815

This little ode, with the addition of two new stanzas is somewhat altered from one of Robert Burns' compositions, and applied to an american occasion: the original being Bruce's supposed address to his army, a little before the battle of Bannockbourne.

181

The BATTLE OF STONINGTON

ON THE SEABOARD OF CONNECTICUT;

[_]

In an attack upon the town and a small fort of two guns, by the Ramillies, seventy-four gun ship, commanded by sir Thomas Hardy; the Pactolus, 38 gun ship, Despatch, brig of 22 guns, and a razee, or bomb ship.—

August, 1814.

Four gallant ships from England came
Freighted deep with fire and flame,
And other things we need not name,
To have a dash at Stonington.

Now safely moor'd, their work begun;
They thought to make the yankees run,
And have a mighty deal of fun
In stealing sheep at Stonington.

A deacon, then popp'd up his head
And parson Jones's sermon read,
In which the reverend doctor said
That they must fight for Stonington.

A townsman bade them, next, attend
To sundry resolutions penn'd,
By which they promised to defend
With sword and gun, old Stonington.

The ships advancing different ways,
The britons soon began to blaze,
And put th' old women in amaze,
Who fear'd the loss of Stonington.

The yankees to their fort repair'd,
And made as though they little cared
For all that came—though very hard
The cannon play'd on Stonington.

182

The Ramillies began the attack,
Despatch came forward—bold and black—
And none can tell what kept them back
From setting fire to Stonington.

The bombardiers with bomb and ball,
Soon made a farmer's barrack fall,
And did a cow-house sadly maul
That stood a mile from Stonington.

They kill'd a goose, they kill'd a hen,
Three hogs they wounded in a pen—
They dash'd away, and pray what then?
This was not taking Stonington.

The shells were thrown, the rockets flew,
But not a shell, of all they threw,
Though every house was full in view,
Could burn a house in Stonington.

To have their turn they thought but fair;—
The yankees brought two guns to bear,
And, sir, it would have made you stare,
This smoke of smokes at Stonington.

They bored Pactolus through and through,
And kill'd and wounded of her crew
So many, that she bade adieu
T' the gallant boys of Stonington.

The brig Despatch was hull'd and torn—
So crippled, riddled, so forlorn,
No more she cast an eye of scorn
On th' little fort at Stonington.

The Ramillies gave up th' affray
And, with her comrades, sneak'd away—
Such was the valor, on that day,
Of british tars near Stonington.

183

But some assert, on certain grounds,
(Besides the damage and the wounds)
It cost the king ten thousand pounds
To have a dash at Stonington.

1815

On the CONFLAGRATIONS AT WASHINGTON;

August 24, 1814

—Jam deiphobi dedit ampla ruinam,
Vulcano superante, domus; jam proximus ardet
Ucalegon.—
Virgil.

Now, George the third rules not alone,
For George the vandal shares the throne,
True flesh of flesh and bone of bone.

God save us from the fangs of both;
Or, one a vandal, one a goth,
May roast or boil us into froth.

Likes danes, of old, their fleet they man
And rove from Beersheba to Dan,
To burn, and beard us—where they can.

They say, at George the fourth's command
This vagrant host was sent, to land
And leave in every house—a brand.

An idiot only would require
Such war—the worst they could desire—
The felon's war—the war of fire.

The warfare, now, th' invaders make
Must surely keep us all awake,
Or life is lost for freedom's sake.

184

They said to Cockburn, “honest Cock!
To make a noise and give a shock
Push off, and burn their navy dock:

“Their capitol shall be emblazed!
How will the buckskins stand amazed,
And curse the day its walls were raised!”

Six thousand heroes disembark—
Each left at night his floating ark
And Washington was made their mark.

That few would fight them—few or none—
Was by their leaders clearly shown—
And “down,” they said, “with Madison!”

How close they crept along the shore!
As closely as if Rodgers saw her—
A frigate to a seventy-four.

A veteran host, by veterans led,
With Ross and Cockburn at their head—
They came—they saw—they burnt—and fled.

But not unpunish'd they retired;
They something paid, for all they fired,
In soldiers kill'd, and chiefs expired.

Five hundred veterans bit the dust,
Who came, inflamed with lucre's lust—
And so they waste—and so they must.

They left our congress naked walls—
Farewell to towers and capitols!
To lofty roofs and splendid halls!

To courtly domes and glittering things,
To folly, that too near us clings,
To courtiers who—'tis well—had wings.

185

Farewell to all but glorious war,
Which yet shall guard Potomac's shore,
And honor lost, and fame restore.

To conquer armies in the field
Was, once, the surest method held
To make a hostile country yield.

The mode is this, now acted on;
In conflagrating Washington,
They held our independence gone!

Supposing George's house at Kew,
Were burnt, (as we intend to do,)
Would that be burning England too?

Supposing, near the silver Thames
We laid in ashes their saint James,
Or Blenheim palace wrapt in flames;

Made Hampton Court to fire a prey,
And meanly, then, to sneak away,
And never ask them, what's to pay?

Would that be conquering London town?
Would that subvert the english throne,
Or bring the royal system down?

With all their glare of guards or guns,
How would they look like simpletons,
And not at all the lion's sons!

Supposing, then, we take our turn
And make it public law, to burn,
Would not old english honor spurn

At such a mean insidious plan
Which only suits some savage clan—
And surely not—the english man!

186

A doctrine has prevail'd too long;
A king, they hold, can do no wrong—
Merely a pitch-fork, without prong:

But de'il may trust such doctrines, more,—
One king, that wrong'd us, long before,
Has wrongs, by hundreds, yet in store.

He wrong'd us forty years ago;
He wrongs us yet, we surely know;
He'll wrong us till he gets a blow

That, with a vengeance, will repay
The mischiefs we lament this day,
This burning, damn'd, infernal play;

Will send one city to the sky,
Its buildings low and buildings high,
And buildings—built the lord knows why;

Will give him an eternal check
That breaks his heart or breaks his neck,
And plants our standard on QUEBEC.

1815

To THE LAKE SQUADRONS.

The brilliant task to you assign'd
Asks every effort of the mind,
And every energy, combined,
To crush the foe.

Sail where they will, you must be there;
Lurk where they can, you will not spare
The blast of death—but all things dare
To bring them low.

187

To wield his thunders on Champlain,
Macdonough leads his gallant train,
And, his great object to sustain,
Vermont unites

Her hardy youths and veterans bold
From shelter'd vale and mountain cold,
Who fought, to guard, in days of old
Their country's rights.

That country's wrongs are all your own
And to the world the word is gone—
Her independence must to none
Be sign'd away.

Be to the nation's standards true,
To Britain, and to Europe shew
That you can fight and conquer too,
And prostrate lay.

That bitter foe, whose thousands rise
No more to fight us in disguise,
But count our freedom for their prize,
If valor fails:

Beneath your feet let fear be cast,
Remember deeds of valor past,
And nail your colors to the mast
And spread your sails.

In all the pride and pomp of war
Let thunders from the cannon roar,
And lightnings flash from shore to shore,
To wing the ball.

Let Huron from his slumbers wake,
Bid Erie to his centre shake,
Till, foundering in Ontario's lake,
You swamp them all!

1815

188

ROYAL CONSULTATIONS;

Relative to the Disposal of LORD WELLINGTON'S ARMY.

Said the goth to the vandal, the prince to the king,
Let us do a mad action, to make the world ring:
With Wellington's army we now have the means
To make a bold stroke and exhibit new scenes.

A stroke at the states is my ardent desire,
To waste, and harass them with famine and fire;
My vengeance to carry through village and town,
And even to batter their capitol down.

The vandal then answer'd, and said to the goth,
Dear George, with yourself I am equally wroth:
Of Wellington's army dispose as you please,
It is best, I presume, they should go beyond seas;
For, should they come home, I can easily show
The hangman will have too much duty to do.

So, away came the bruisers, and when they came here
Some mischief they did, where no army was near:
They came to correct and they came to chastise
And to do all the evils their heads could devise.

At Washington city, they burnt and destroy'd
Till among the big houses they made a huge void;
Then back to their shipping they flew like the wind,
But left many more than five hundred behind
Of wounded and dead, and others say, double;
And thus was the hangman excused from some trouble.

Alexandria beheld them in battle array;
Alexandria they plunder'd a night and a day.
Then quickly retreated, with moderate loss,
Their forces conducted by Cockburn and Ross.

189

At Baltimore, next, was their place of attack;
But Baltimore drove them repeatedly back;
There Rodgers they saw, and their terror was such,
They saw they were damn'd when they saw him approach.

The forts were assail'd by the strength of their fleet,
And the forts, in disorder beheld them retreat
So shatter'd and crippled, so mangled and sore,
That the tide of Patapsco was red with their gore.

Their legions by land no better succeeded—
In vain they manoeuvered, in vain they paraded,
Their hundreds on hundreds were strew'd on the ground,
Each shot from the rifles brought death or a wound.
One shot from a buckskin completed their loss,
And their legions no longer were headed by Ross!

Where they mean to go next, we can hardly devise,
But home they would go if their master was wise.

Yet folly so long has directed their course;
Such madness is seen in the waste of their force,
Such weakness and folly, with malice combined,
Such rancor, revenge, and derangement of mind,
That, all things consider'd, with truth we may say,
Both Cochrane and Cockburn are running away.

To their regent, the prince, to their master the king
They are now on the way, they are now on the wing,
To tell them the story of loss and disaster,
One begging a pension, the other a plaister.
Let them speed as they may, to us it is plain
They will patch up their hulks for another campaign,
Their valor to prove, and their havoc to spread
When Wellington's army is missing or dead.

1815

About this time, September, 1814, the admirals Cochrane and Cockburn quitted the coast of the United States in their respective flag ships.

University of Virginia Library

1. PART ONE POEMS OF FREEDOM

The RISING GLORY OF AMERICA.

Being part of a Dialogue pronounced on a public occasion.

ARGUMENT.

DISCOVERY.

A POLITICAL LITANY.

Libera Nos, Domine.—DELIVER US O LORD, not only from British Dependence, but also,

TO THE AMERICANS,

On the Rumoured Approach of the Hessian Forces, Waldeckers, &c. (Published 1775)

ON A HESSIAN DEBARKATION. 1776.

AMERICA INDEPENDENT;

And Her Everlasting Deliverance from British Tyranny and Oppression.

On the new AMERICAN FRIGATE ALLIANCE.

On the Death OF CAPTAIN NICHOLAS BIDDLE,

COMMANDER OF THE RANDOLPH FRIGATE, BLOWN UP NEAR BARBADOES, 1776.

GEORGE THE THIRD'S SOLILOQUY.

THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP

CANTO I. The CAPTURE.

CANTO II. The PRISON SHIP.

CANTO III. The HOSPITAL PRISON SHIP.

On THE MEMORABLE VICTORY,

Obtained by the gallant Captain Paul Jones, of Le Bon Homme Richard, (or father Richard) over the Seraphis, of 44 guns, under the command of Captain Pearson:

TO LORD CORNWALLIS,

AT YORK-VIRGINIA, October 8, 1781.

ON THE FALL OF GENERAL EARL CORNWALLIS,

Who, with above seven thousand Men, surrendered themselves prisoners of war, to the renowned and illustrious General GEORGE WASHINGTON, commander in chief of the allied armies of France and America, on the memorable 19th of October, 1781.

TO THE MEMORY Of the brave AMERICANS,

under General GREENE, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781.

ARNOLD'S DEPARTURE.

THE POLITICAL BALANCE; OR, THE FATES OF BRITAIN AND AMERICA COMPARED: A TALE.

BARNEY'S INVITATION.

SONG,

On Captain Barney's Victory over the Ship General Monk. April 26, 1782.

A PICTURE OF THE TIMES,

With Occasional Reflections.

To A CONCEALED ROYALIST

On a Virulent Attack

Occasioned By GENERAL WASHINGTON'S Arrival in Philadelphia,

on his way to his residence in Virginia. (December, 1783)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

On the EMIGRATION TO AMERICA and Peopling the Western Country

LITERARY IMPORTATION.

STANZAS

Written at the foot of Monte Souffriere, near the Town of Basseterre, Guadaloupe.

Epistle to THE PATRIOTIC FARMER.

ON THE PROSPECT OF A REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

THE DISTREST THEATRE.

The New England SABBATH-DAY CHACE.

(Written Under the Character of HEZEKIAH SALEM.)

On the Death of DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

EPISTLE

From DR. FRANKLIN (deceased) to his Poetical Panegyrists, on some of their Absurd Compliments.

THE DEPARTURE:

Occasioned by the Removal of Congress from New-York to Philadelphia.—(1790.)

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER.

(A Picture from the Life)

Occasioned by A LEGISLATION BILL

Proposing a Taxation upon Newspapers.

To the PUBLIC.

LINES WRITTEN ON A PUNCHEON OF JAMAICAN SPIRITS.

A WARNING TO AMERICA.

On the FOURTEENTH OF JULY,

a Day ever Memorable to Regenerated France.

1. PART ONE
POEMS OF FREEDOM