[F] Alliance!—what, &c. See his speech in the House of Commons, June 22, 1779, in answer to Lord Nugent.—Freneau's note.
[G] Let turn-coat Johnston, &c. The worthy British commissioner, of bribing memory, who, for the sake of a few guineas, belied his own conscience, and sided with the majority.—Freneau's note.
[H] And be disgrac'd at last by him who reigns. As Gage, the Howes, Burgoyne, &c., for not doing impossibilities.—Ib.
King G.
No comfort in these cruel words I find—
Ungrateful words to my tormented mind!
With me alone both France and Spain contend,
And not one nation will be call'd my friend:
Unpitying now the Dutchman sees me fall,
The Russian leaves me to the haughty[14] Gaul,
The German, grown as brutish[15] as the Dane,
Consigns my carcase to the jaws of Spain.
Where are the hosts they promis'd me of yore,
When rich and great they heard my thunders roar,
While yet confess'd the master of the sea,
The Germans drain'd their wide domain for me,
And aiding Britain with a friendly hand,
Helpt to subdue the rebels and their land?[I]
Ah! rebels, rebels! insolent and mad;
My Scottish rebels were not half so bad,[J]
They soon submitted to superior sway;[K]
But these grow stronger as my hosts decay:
What hosts have perish'd on their hostile shore!
They went for conquest, but return'd no more.
Columbia, thou a friend in better times!
Lost are to me thy pleasurable climes.
You wish me buried in eternal night,
You curse the day when first I saw the light—
Thy[16] commerce vanish'd, hostile nations share,
And thus you leave me[17] naked, poor, and bare;
Despised by those who should my[18] cause defend,
And helpless left without one pitying friend.
These dire afflictions shake my changeful throne,
And turn my brain—a very idiot grown:
Of all the isles, the realms with which I part,
Columbia sits the heaviest at my heart,
She, she provokes the deepest, heaviest sigh,
And makes me doubly wretched ere I die.
Some dreary convent's unfrequented gloom
(Like Charles of Spain)[L] had better be my doom:
There while in absence from my crown I sigh,
The[19] Prince of Wales these ills may rectify;
A happier fortune may his crown await,
He yet perhaps may save this sinking state.
I'll to my prayers, my bishops and my beads,[M]
And beg God's pardon for my heinous deeds;
Those streams of blood, that, spilt by my command,
Call out for vengeance on this guilty land.
[I] The Hessians, Waldeckers, Anspachers, &c.—Freneau's note.
[J] The Year 1745.—Ib.
[K] Culloden.—Ib.
[L] Like Charles of Spain, &c. Charles V. who, in 1556, resigning the crown to his son Philip II., shut himself up in the monastery of St. Just, in Spain, where he died two years after.—Ib.
[M] I'll to my prayers, my bishops, and my beads. This is not said without foundation, as he established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada, in 1775.—Freneau's note.