In the Vicinity of the Former Stations of the Prison Ships, at New-York.[178]
Beneath these banks, along this shore,
And underneath the waters, more
Forgotten corpses rest;
More bones by cruelty consigned
To death, than shall be told mankind
To chill the feeling breast:
More bones of those who, dying here
In floating dungeons, anchored near,
A prey to fierce disease,
Than fame in her recording page
Will tell some late enquiring age,
When telling things like these.
Ah me! what ills, what sighs, what groans,
What spectre forms, what moving moans,
What woes on woes were found;
When here oppressed, insulted, crossed,
The vigour of the soul was lost
In miseries thickening round.
The youths of firm undaunted mind,
To climate nor to coast confined,
All misery taught to bear—
I saw them, as the sail they spread,
I saw them by misfortune led
To capture, and to care.
Though night and storms were round them cast,
They climbed the well-supported mast,
And reefed the fluttering sail;
Though thunders roared and lightnings glared,
They toil, nor death, nor danger feared,
They braved the loudest gale.—
Great Cause, that brought them all their woe:
Thou, Freedom!—bade their spirits glow;
But forced, at last, to yield,
Died in despair each sickening crew:
They vanished from the world—but you,
Columbia, kept the field.
They sunk, unpitied, in their bloom,—
They scarcely found a shallow tomb
To hide the naked bones:
For, feeble was the nervous hand
That once could toil, or once command
The force of Neptune's sons.
In aid of that immortal cause
Which spurned at England's tyrant laws,
These passed the troubled main;
They dared the seas she called her own,
To meet the ruffians of a throne,
And honour's purpose gain.
All generous—while that power was proved,
To war the brave adventurers moved,
And catched the seaman's art,
Met on their own domain, the crew
Of foreign slaves, that never knew
The independent heart.