An English bishop’s cur of late
  Disclosed rebellions ’gainst the State;
  So frogs croaked Pharaoh to repentance,
  And lice delayed the fatal sentence: 
  And Heaven can rain you at pleasure,
  By Gage, as soon as by a Caesar. 
  Yet did our hero in these days
  Pick up some laurel-wreaths of praise;
  And as the statuary of Seville
  Made his cracked saint an excellent devil. 
  So, though our war small triumph brings,
  We gained great fame in other things. 
  Did not our troops show great discerning,
  And skill, your various arts in learning? 
  Outwent they not each native noodle
  By far, in playing Yankee-doodle? 
  Which, as ’twas your New England tune,
  ’Twas marvellous they took so soon. 
  And ere the year was fully through,
  Did they not learn to foot it too,
  And such a dance as ne’er was known
  For twenty miles on end lead down? 
  Did they not lay their heads together,
  And gain your art to tar and feather,
  When Colonel Nesbitt, thro’ the town,
  In triumph bore the country-clown? 
  Oh! what a glorious work to sing
  The veteran troops of Britain’s king,
  Adventuring for th’heroic laurel
  With bag of feathers and tar-barrel! 
  To paint the cart where culprits ride,
  And Nesbitt marching at its side. 
  Great executioner and proud,
  Like hangman high, on Holborn road;
  And o’er the slow-drawn rumbling car,
  The waving ensigns of the war!

* * * * *

=_Philip Freneau, 1752-1832._= (Manual, pp. 486, 511.)

From “An Indian Burying-ground.”

=_318._=

  In spite of all the learned have said,
    I still my old opinion keep;
  The posture that we give the dead,
    Points out the soul’s eternal sleep.

  Not so the ancients of these lands;—­
    The Indian, when from life released,
  Again is seated with his friends,
    And shares again the joyous feast.

  His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
    And venison, for a journey dressed,
  Bespeak the nature of the soul,—­
    Activity, that wants no rest.

  His bow, for action ready bent,
    And arrows, with a head of bone,
  Can only mean that life is spent,
    And not the finer essence gone.

* * * * *

  Here still a lofty rock remains,
    On which the curious eye may trace,
  Now wasted half by wearing rains,
    The fancies of a ruder race.

* * * * *

  By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews,
    In vestments for the chase arrayed. 
  The hunter still the deer pursues,
    The hunter and the deer—­a shade.

* * * * *

=_David Humphreys, 1783-1818._= (Manual, p. 512.)

From “The Happiness of America.”