Lucinda’s fate; the tale, ye nations, hear;
Eternal ages, trace it with a tear.
Long from the rampart, through the imbattled field,
She spied her Heartly where his column wheel’d,
Traced him with steadfast eye and tortured breast
That heaved in concert with his dancing crest;
And oft, with head advanced and hand outspread,
Seem’d from her love to ward the flying lead;
Till, dimm’d by distance and the gathering cloud,
At last he vanisht in the warrior crowd.
She thought he fell; and wild with fearless air,
She left the camp to brave the woodland war,
Made a long circuit, all her friends to shun
And wander’d wide beneath the falling sun;
Then veering to the field, the pickets past
To gain the hillock where she miss’d him last.
Fond maid, he rests not there; from finisht fight
He sought the camp and closed the rear of flight.
He hurries to his tent;—oh rage! despair!
No glimpse, no tidings of the frantic fair;
Save that some carmen, as acamp they drove,
Had seen her coursing for the western grove.
Faint with fatigue and choked with burning thirst,
Forth from his friends with bounding leap he burst,
Vaults o’er the palisade with eyes on flame
And fills the welkin with Lucinda’s name,
Swift through the wild wood paths phrenetic springs—
Lucind! Lucinda! through the wild wood rings.
All night he wanders; barking wolves alone
And screaming night-birds answer to his moan;
For war had roused them from their savage den;
They scent the field, they snuff the walks of men.
The fair one too, of every aid forlorn,
Had raved and wander’d, till officipus morn
Awaked the Mohawks from their short repose
To glean the plunder ere their comrades rose.
Two Mohawks met the maid—historian, hold!—
Poor human nature, must thy shame be told?
Where then that proud preeminence of birth,
Thy moral sense? the brightest boast of earth.
Had but the tiger changed his heart for thine,
Could rocks their bowels with that heart combine,
Thy tear had gusht, thy hand relieved her pain
And led Lucinda to her lord again.
She starts, with eyes upturn’d and fleeting breath,
In their raised axes views her instant death,
Spreads her white hands to heaven in frantic prayer,
Then runs to grasp their knees and crouches there.
Her hair, half lost along the shrubs she past,
Rolls in loose tangles round her lovely waist;
Her kerchief torn betrays the globes of snow
That heave responsive to her weight of woe.
Does all this eloquence suspend the knife?
Does no superior bribe contest her life?
There does: the scalps by British gold are paid;
A long-hair’d scalp adorns that heavenly head;
And comes the sacred spoil from friend or foe,
No marks distinguish, and no man can know.
With calculating pause and demon grin,
They seize her hands and through her face divine
Drive the descending ax; the shriek she sent
Attain’d her lover’s ear; he thither bent
With all the speed his wearied limbs could yield,
Whirl’d his keen blade and stretcht upon the field
The yelling fiends; who there disputing stood
Her gory scalp, their horrid prize of blood.
He sunk delirious on her lifeless clay
And past, in starts of sense, the dreadful day.
Are these thy trophies, Carleton! these the swords
Thy hand unsheath’d42 and gave the savage hordes,
Thy boasted friends, by treaties brought from far
To aid thy master in his murderous war?
But now Britannia’s chief, with proud disdain
Coopt in his camp, demands the field again,
Back to their fate his splendid host he drew,
Swell’d high their rage, and led the charge anew;
Again the batteries roar, the lightnings play,
Again they fall, again they roll away;
For now Columbia with rebounding might
Foil’d quick their columns, but confined their flight.
Her wings, like fierce tornados, gyring ran,
Crusht their wide flanks and gain’d their flying van;
Here Arnold charged; the hero storm’d and pour’d
A thousand thunders where he turn’d his sword.
No pause, no parley; onward far he fray’d,
Dispersed whole squadrons every bound he made,
Broke through their rampart, seized their camp and stores
And pluckt the standard from their broken towers.
Aghast, confounded in the midway field,
They drop their arms; the banded nations yield.
When sad Burgoyne, in one disastrous day,
Sees future crowns and former wreaths decay,
His banners furl’d, his long battalions wheel’d
To pile their muskets on the battle field;
While two pacific armies shade one plain,
The mighty victors and the captive train.
Book VII
Coast of France rises in vision—Louis, to humble the British power, forms an alliance with the American states—This brings France, Spain and Holland into the war, and rouses Hyder Ally to attack the English in India—The vision returns to America, where the military operations continue with various success—Battle of Monmouth—Storming of Stonypoint by Wayne—Actions of Lincoln and surrender of Charleston—Movements of Cornwallis—Actions of Greene and battle of Eutaw—French army arrives and joins the American—They march to besiege the English army of Cornwallis in York and Gloster—Naval battle of Degrasse and Graves—Two of their ships grappled and blown up—Progress of the siege—A citadel mined and blown up—Capture of Cornwallis and his army—Their banners furled and muskets piled on the field of battle.
Thus view’d the Pair; when lo, in eastern skies,
From glooms unfolding, Gallia’s coasts arise.
Bright o’er the scenes of state a golden throne
Instarr’d with gems and hung with purple shone;
Young Bourbon there in royal splendor sat,
And fleets and moving armies round him wait.
For now the contest, with increased alarms,
Fill’d every court and roused the world to arms;
As Hesper’s hand, that light from darkness brings,
And good to nations from the scourge of kings,
In this dread hour bade broader beams unfold
And the new world illuminate the old.
In Europe’s realms a school of sages trace
The expanding dawn that waits the reasoning race;
On the bright Occident they fix their eyes,
Through glorious toils where struggling nations rise;
Where each firm deed, each new illustrious name
Calls into light a field of nobler fame:
A field that feeds their hope, confirms the plan
Of well poised freedom and the weal of man.
They scheme, they theorize, expand their scope,
Glance o’er Hesperia to her utmost cope;
Where streams unknown for other oceans stray,
Where suns unseen their waste of beams display,
Where sires of unborn nations claim their birth
And ask their empires in those wilds of earth.
While round all eastern climes, with painful eye,
In slavery sunk they see the kingdoms lie,
Whole states exhausted to enrich a throne,
Their
