THOMAS DAY

  FROM THE DESOLATION OF AMERICA

  I see, I see, swift bursting through the shade,
  The cruel soldier, and the reeking blade. 
  And there the bloody cross of Britain waves,
  Pointing to deeds of death an host of slaves. 
  To them unheard the wretched tell their pain,
  And every human sorrow sues in vain: 
  Their hardened bosoms never knew to melt;
  Each woe unpitied, and each pang unfelt.—­
  See! where they rush, and with a savage joy,
  Unsheathe the sword, impatient to destroy. 
  Fierce as the tiger, bursting from the wood,
  With famished jaws, insatiable of blood!

  Yet, yet a moment, the fell steel restrain;
  Must Nature’s sacred ties all plead in vain? 
  Ah! while your kindred blood remains unspilt,
  And Heaven allows an awful pause from guilt,
  Suspend the war, and recognize the bands,
  Against whose lives you arm your impious hands!—­
  Not these, the boast of Gallia’s proud domains,
  Nor the scorched squadrons of Iberian plains;
  Unhappy men! no foreign war you wage,
  In your own blood you glut your frantic rage;
  And while you follow where oppression leads,
  At every step, a friend, or brother, bleeds.

* * * * *

Devoted realm! what now avails thy claim,
To milder virtue, or sublimer flame? 
Or what avails, unhappy land! to trace
The generous labours of thy patriot race? 
Who, urged by fate, and fortitude their guide,
On the wild surge their desperate fortune tried;
Undaunted every toil and danger bore,
And fixed their standards on a savage shore;
What time they fled, with an averted eye,
The baneful influence of their native sky,
Where slowly rising through the dusky air,
The northern meteors shot their lurid glare. 
In vain their country’s genius sought to move,
With tender images of former love,
Sad rising to their view, in all her charms,
And weeping wooed them to her well-known arms. 
The favoured clime, the soft domestic air,
And wealth and ease were all below their care,
Since there an hated tyrant met their eyes
And blasted every blessing of the skies.

* * * * *

And now, no more by nature’s bounds confined
He[A] spreads his dragon pinions to the wind. 
The genius of the West beholds him near,
And freedom trembles at her last barrier.

In vain she deemed in this sequestered seat
To fix a refuge for her wandering feet;
To mark one altar sacred to her fame,
And save the ruins of the human name.

* * * * *

Lo!  Britain bended to the servile yoke,
Her fire extinguished, and her spirit broke,
Beneath the pressure of [a tyrant’s] sway,
Herself at once the spoiler and the prey,
Detest[s] the virtues she can boast no more
And envies every right to every shore! 
At once to nature and to pity blind,
Wages abhorred war with humankind;
And wheresoe’er her ocean rolls his wave,
Provokes an enemy, or meets a slave.