Wrapt in the funeral shroud he sees descend
The guide of nations and the Muse’s friend.
Columbus dropt a tear; while Hesper’s eye
Traced the freed spirit mounting through the sky.
Each generous Adams, freedom’s favorite pair,
And Hancock rose the tyrant’s rage to dare,
Groupt with firm Jefferson, her steadiest hope,
Of modest mien but vast unclouded scope.
Like four strong pillars of her state they stand,
They clear from doubt her brave but wavering band;
Colonial charters in their hands they bore
And lawless acts of ministerial power.
Some injured right in every page appears,
A king in terrors and a land in tears;
From all his guileful plots the veil they drew,
With eye retortive lookt creation through,
Traced moral nature through her total plan,
Markt all the steps of liberty and man;
Crowds rose to reason while their accents rung,
And Independence thunder’d from their tongue.
Columbus turn’d; when rolling to the shore
Swells o’er the seas an undulating roar;
Slow, dark, portentous, as the meteors sweep
And curtain black the illimitable deep,
High stalks from surge to surge a demon Form
That howls through heaven and breathes a billowing storm.
His head is hung with clouds; his giant hand
Flings a blue flame far flickering to the land;
His blood-stain’d limbs drip carnage as he strides
And taint with gory grume the staggering tides;
Like two red suns his quivering eyeballs glare,
Engines of death behind him load the air,
Pikes, muskets, mortars, guns and globes of fire
And lighted bombs that fusing trails expire.
Percht on his helmet, two twin sisters rode,
The favorite offspring of the murderous god,
Famine and Pestilence; whom whilom bore
His wife, grim Discord, on Trinacria’s shore;
When first their cyclop sons, from Etna’s forge,
Fill’d his foul magazine, his gaping gorge:
Then earth convulsive groan’d, high shriekt the air,
And hell in gratulation call’d him War.
Behind the fiend, swift hovering for the coast,
Hangs o’er the wave Britannia’s sail-wing’d host;
They crowd the main, they spread their sheets abroad
From the wide Lawrence to the Georgian flood,
Point their black batteries to the peopled shore,
And spouting flames commence the hideous roar.
Where fortless Falmouth, looking o’er her bay,
In terror saw the approaching thunders play,
The fire begins; the shells o’er arching fly
And shoot a thousand rainbows through the sky;
On Charlestown spires, on Bedford roofs they light,
Groton and Fairfield kindle from the flight,
Norwalk expands the blaze; o’er Reading hills
High flaming Danbury the welkin fills;
Esopus burns, New York’s delightful fanes
And sea-nursed Norfolk light the neighboring plains.
From realm to realm the smoky volumes bend,
Reach round the bays and up the streams extend;
Deep o’er the concave heavy wreaths are roll’d,
And midland towns and distant groves infold.
Through solid curls of smoke the bursting fires
Climb in tall pyramids above the spires,
Concentring all the winds; whose forces, driven
With equal rage from every point of heaven,
Whirl into conflict, round the scantling pour
The twisting flames and through the rafters roar,
Suck up the cinders, send them sailing far,
To warn the nations of the raging war,
Bend high the blazing vortex, swell’d and curl’d,
Careering, brightening o’er the lustred world,
Absorb the reddening clouds that round them run,
Lick the pale stars, and mock their absent sun:
Seas catch the splendor, kindling skies resound,
And falling structures shake the smoldering ground.
Crowds of wild fugitives, with frantic tread,
Flit through the flames that pierce the midnight shade,
Back on the burning domes revert their eyes,
Where some lost friend, some perisht infant lies,
Their maim’d, their sick, their age-enfeebled sires
Have sunk sad victims to the sateless fires;
They greet with one last look their tottering walls,
See the blaze thicken as the ruin falls,
Then o’er the country train their dumb despair
And far behind them leave the dancing glare;
Their own crusht roofs still lend a trembling light,
Point their long shadows and direct their flight.
Till wandering wide they seek some cottage door,
Ask the vile pittance due the vagrant poor;
Or faint and faltering on the devious road,
They sink at last and yield their mortal load.
But where the sheeted flames through Charlestown roar,
And lashing waves hiss round the burning shore,
Through the deep folding fires dread Bunker’s height
Thunders o’er all and shows a field of fight.
Like nightly shadows through a flaming grove,
To the dark fray the closing squadrons move;
They join, they break, they thicken through the glare,
And blazing batteries burst along the war;
Now wrapt in reddening smoke, now dim in sight,
They rake the hill, or wing the downward flight;
Here, wheel’d and wedged, Britannia’s veterans turn,
And the long lightnings from their muskets burn;
There scattering strive the thin colonial train,
Whose broken platoons still the field maintain;
Till Britain’s fresh battalions rise the height
And with increasing volleys give the fight.
When, choked with dust, discolor’d deep in gore
And gall’d on all sides from the ships and shore,
Hesperia’s host moves off the field afar
And saves, by slow retreat, the sad remains of war.
There strides bold Putnam and from all the plains
Calls the tired troops, the tardy rear sustains,
And, mid the whizzing balls that skim the lowe,
Waves back his sword, defies the following foe.
In this prime prelude of the toil that waits
The nascent glories of his infant states,
Columbus mourn’d the slain. A numerous crowd,
Half of each host, had bought their fame with blood;
From the whole hill he saw the lifestream pour
And sloping pathways trod with tracks of gore.
Here, glorious Warren, thy cold earth was seen,
Here spring thy laurels in immortal green;
Dearest of chiefs that ever prest the plain,
In freedom’s cause with early honors slain;
Still dear in death, as when before our sight
You graced the senate, or you led the fight.
The grateful Muse shall tell the world your fame,
And unborn realms resound the deathless name.
Now from all plains, as settling smokes decay,
The banded freemen rise in open day;
Tall through the lessening shadows, half conceal’d,
They throng and gather in a central field;
In unskill’d ranks but ardent soul they stand,
Claim quick the foe and eager strife demand.
In front firm Washington superior shone,
His eye directed to the half-seen sun;
As through the cloud the bursting splendors glow
And light the passage to the distant foe.
His waving steel returns the living day
And points, through unfought fields, the warrior’s way;
His valorous deeds to be confined no more,
Monongahela, to thy desert shore.
Matured with years, with nobler glory warm,
Fate in his eye and empire on his arm,
He feels his sword the strength of nations wield
And moves before
