SIR GUY CARLETON'S ADDRESS TO THE
AMERICANS[163]
From Britain's famed island once more I come over,
(No island on earth is in prowess above her)
With powers and commissions your hearts to recover!
Our king, I must tell you, is plagued with a phantom
(Independence they call it) that hourly doth haunt him,
And relief, my dear rebels, you only can grant him.
Tom Gage and Sir Harry, Sir William, (our boast)
Lord Howe, and the rest that have travelled the coast,
All failed in their projects of laying this ghost:
So unless the damned spectre myself can expel
It will yet kill our monarch, I know very well,
And gallop him off on his lion to hell.
But I heartily wish, that, instead of Sir Guy,
They had sent out a seer from the island of Skie,
Who rebels, and devils, and ghosts could defy:
So great is our prospect of failing at last,
When I look at the present, and think of the past,
I wish with our heroes I had not been classed;
For though, to a man, we are bullies and bruisers,
And covered with laurels, we still are the losers,
'Till each is recalled with his Tory accusers:
But the war now is altered, and on a new plan;
By negociation we'll do what we can—
And I am an honest, well-meaning old man;
Too proud to retreat, and too weak to advance,
We must stay where we are, at the mercy of chance,
'Till Fortune shall help us to lead you a dance.