* * * * *
Gay groves exult: Chinesian gardens glow,
And bright reflections paint the wave below.
The poet celebrates Connecticut artists and inventors:—
Such forms, such deeds on Rafael’s tablets shine,
And such, O Trumbull, glow alike on thine.
David Bushnell of Saybrook had invented a submarine torpedo boat, nicknamed “the American Turtle,” with which he undertook to blow up Lord Admiral Howe’s gunship in New York harbor. Humphreys gives an account of the failure of this enterprise in his “Life of Putnam.” It was some of Bushnell’s machines, set afloat on the Delaware, among the British shipping, that occasioned the panic celebrated in Hopkinson’s satirical ballad, “The Battle of the Kegs,” which we used to declaim at school. “See,” exclaims Dwight,—
See Bushnell’s strong creative genius, fraught
With all th’ assembled powers of skillful thought,
His mystic vessel plunge beneath the waves