The poet follows him in his career until he enters upon his perilous mission under instructions from Washington. Of the final scene he wrote:
"Not Socrates or noble Russell died.
Or gentle Sidney, Britain's boast and pride,
Or gen'rous Moore, approached life's final goal,
With more composed, more firm and stable soul."
J.S. Babcock, of Coventry, wrote in the metre of Wolfe's "Sir John Moore":
"He fell in the spring of his early prime,
With his fair hopes all around him;
He died for his birth-land—a 'glorious crime'—
Ere the palm of his fame had crowned him.
"He fell in her darkness—he lived not to see
The noon of her risen glory;
But the name of the brave, in the hearts of the free,
Shall be twined in her deathless glory."
In a poem delivered before the Linonian Society of Yale College, at its centennial anniversary in 1853, a society of which Hale was a member, Francis M. Finch said, in allusion to the martyr:
"To drum-beat and heart-beat,
A soldier marches by;
There is color on his cheek,
There is courage in his eye;
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die.
"By starlight and moonlight
He seeks the Briton's camp;
He hears the rustling flag,
And that armèd sentry's tramp;
And the starlight and moonlight
His silent wanderings lamp.
"With slow tread, and still tread,
He scans the tented-line;
And he counts the battery-guns
By the gaunt and shadowy pine;
And his slow tread and still tread
Gives no warning sign.
"The dark wave, the plumed wave,
It meets his eager glance,
And it sparkles 'neath the stars
Like the glimmer of a lance;
A dark wave, a plumed wave,
On an emerald expanse.
"With calm brow, steady brow,
He listens to his doom;
In his look there is no fear,
Nor a shadow trace of gloom;
And with calm brow and steady brow
He robes him for the tomb.
"In the long night, the still night,
He kneels upon the sod;
And the brutal guards withhold
E'en the solemn Word of God!
In the long night, the still night,
He walks where Christ hath trod!
"'Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn,
He dies upon the tree;
And he mourns that he can lose
But one life for Liberty;
And in the blue morn, the sunny morn
His spirit-wings are free!