With sceptred pride, and brow of awe
Oppression gave the world her law,
And man, who should such law disdain,
Resign'd to her malignant reign.
Here on our quiet native coast
No more we dread the warring host
That once alarm'd, when Britain rose,
And made Columbia's sons her foes.
Parent of every cruel art
That stains the soul, that steels the heart,
Fierce war, with all thy bleeding band,
Molest no more this rising land.
May thy loud din be changed for peace,
All human woe and warfare cease,
And nations sheath the sword again
To find a long, pacific reign.[124]
Soon may all tyrants disappear
And man to man be less severe;
The ties of love more firmly bind,
Not fetters, that enchain mankind.
But virtue must her strength maintain,
Or short, too short, is freedom's reign,
And, if her precepts we despise,
Tyrants and kings again will rise.[125]
No more an angry, plundering race,
May man in every clime embrace,
And we on this remoter shore,
Exult in bloody wars no more.
On this returning annual day
May we to heaven our homage pay,
Happy, that here the time's began
That made mankind the friend of man!—
[121] From the edition of 1815. The title is manifestly wrong. The poem was first printed in a small pamphlet with the following title page:
"Means | for the | Preservation | of | Public Liberty. | An | Oration | delivered in the New Dutch Church, | on the | Fourth of July, 1797. | Being the twenty-first | Anniversary of our Independence. | By G. J. Warner. | [Ten lines from Freneau] | New York: | Printed at the Argus Office, | for | Thomas Greenleaf and Naphtali Judah. | 1797."