FLAWLESS HIS HEART
Flawless his heart and tempered to the core
Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning wave,
First left behind him the firm-footed shore,
And, urged by every nerve of sail and oar,
Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave,
Of thought and action the mysterious door,
Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave:
Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun,
And strange stars from beneath the horizon won,
And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave:
High-hearted surely he;
But bolder they who first off-cast
Their moorings from the habitable Past
And ventured chartless on the sea
Of storm-engendering Liberty:
For all earth's width of waters is a span,
And their convulsed existence mere repose,
Matched with the unstable heart of man,
Shoreless in wants, mist-girt in all it knows,
Open to every wind of sect or clan,
And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows.
James Russell Lowell.
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF DISCONTENT
The close of the struggle with the French for the possession of the continent may be fairly said to mark the beginning of that series of aggressions on the part of England which ended in the revolt of her colonies. True there had been before that arbitrary and tyrannical royal governors, and absurdly perverse enactments on the part of the Lords of Trade; but not until the French troubles had been disposed of did the British government bend its energies seriously to regulating the affairs of a people which it considered fractious and turbulent. In the Virginia Gazette for May 2, 1766, appeared one of the first of those songs, afterwards so numerous, which expressed the discontent of the colonies under this régime.
[May 2, 1766]