Thus, feuds and vexations distracted their reign,
(And perhaps a few vestiges still may remain)
But time has presented an offspring as bold,
Less free to believe, and more wise than the old.
Their phantoms, their wizzards, their witches are fled,
Matthew Paris's[F] story with horror is read—
His daughters, and all the enchantments they bore—
And the demon, that pinched them, is heard of no more.
[F] See Neale's History of New England.—Freneau's note.
Their taste for the fine arts is strangely increased,
And Latin's no longer a mark of the beast:
Mathematics, at present, a farmer may know,
Without being hanged for connections below.
Proud, rough, Independent, undaunted and free,
And patient of hardships, their task is the sea,
Their country too barren their wish to attain,
They make up the loss by exploring the main.
Wherever bright Phœbus awakens the gales
I see the bold Yankees expanding their sails,
Throughout the wide ocean pursuing their schemes,
And chacing the whales on its uttermost streams.
No climate, for them, is too cold or too warm,
They reef the broad canvass, and fight with the storm;
In war with the foremost their standards display,
Or glut the loud cannon with death, for the fray.
No valour in fable their valour exceeds,
Their spirits are fitted for desperate deeds;
No rivals have they in our annals of fame,
Or if they are rivalled, 'tis York has the claim.
Inspired at the sound, while the name she repeats,
Bold Fancy conveys me to Hudson's retreats—
Ah, sweet recollection of juvenile dreams
In the groves, and the forests that skirted his streams!
How often, with rapture, those streams were surveyed,
When, sick of the city, I flew to the shade—
How often the bard, and the peasant shall mourn
Ere those groves shall revive, or those shades shall return!