TO AMYNTA.
Sad, O Amynta! through these shades I rove,
And pensive hear the distant cannon roar;
No charming warbler cheers the dreary grove,
And peace, and glad content are now no more.
’Twas to these fields our dauntless fires of yore,
With their bright goddess Liberty retir’d;
They fix’d her standard on the desart shore,
The barb’rous native at their feet expir’d.
Her smiles illumin’d o’er the gloomy plains,
And peace and glory were their valour’s meed:
The virtuous ardour still informs our swains,
And still they conquer, still they dare to bleed.
Erewhile, all uninur’d to war’s alarms,
And good and gentle was the generous swain;
But now vindictive wrath his bosom warms,
He grasps the steel, and treads the sanguine plain.
The pensive Genius of our hapless land,
Sits sadly weeping on a rock reclin’d:
But, see Hope smiling hov’ring o’er him stand,
And spread her gilded banners to the wind.
MATILDA.
Cedar Grove, 1777.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.