We won; but we lost when brave Nicholas died;
The spirit that nerved us was gone from us then;
And Berkeley came back in his arrogant pride
To give to the gallows the best of our men;
But while the grass grows
And the clear water flows,
[The town shall not rise from its ashes again].
So, you come for your victim! I'm ready; but, pray,
Ere I go, some good fellow a full goblet bring.
Thanks, comrade! Now hear the last words I shall say
With the last drink I take. Here's a health to the King,
Who reigns o'er a land
Where, against his command,
The rogues rule and ruin, while honest men swing.
Thomas Dunn English.
Jamestown soon avenged itself. Before Bacon left the place he was ill with fever, and on the first day of October, at the house of a friend in Gloucester County, he "surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the hands of the grim and all-conquering Captain, Death." His death was celebrated in a poem which is perhaps the most brilliant example of sustained poetic art produced in Colonial America. It was written "by his man," of whom absolutely nothing is known.
[BACON'S EPITAPH], MADE BY HIS MAN
[October 1, 1676]
Death, why so cruel? What! no other way
To manifest thy spleen, but thus to slay
Our hopes of safety, liberty, our all,
Which, through thy tyranny, with him must fall
To its late chaos? Had thy rigid force
Been dealt by retail, and not thus in gross,
Grief had been silent. Now we must complain,
Since thou, in him, hast more than thousands slain,
Whose lives and safeties did so much depend
On him their life, with him their lives must end.
If 't be a sin to think Death brib'd can be
We must be guilty; say 'twas bribery
Guided the fatal shaft. Virginia's foes,
To whom for secret crimes just vengeance owes
Deservèd plagues, dreading their just desert,
Corrupted Death by Paracelsian art
Him to destroy; whose well-tried courage such,
Their heartless hearts, nor arms, nor strength could touch.
Who now must heal those wounds, or stop that blood
The Heathen made, and drew into a flood?
Who is't must plead our cause? nor trump, nor drum,
Nor Deputation; these, alas! are dumb
And cannot speak. Our arms (though ne'er so strong)
Will want the aid of his commanding tongue,
Which conquer'd more than Cæsar. He o'erthrew
Only the outward frame; this could subdue
The rugged works of nature. Souls replete
With dull chill cold, he'd animate with heat
Drawn forth of reason's limbec. In a word,
Mars and Minerva both in him concurred
For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike
As Cato's did, may admiration strike
Into his foes; while they confess withal
It was their guilt styl'd him a criminal.
Only this difference does from truth proceed:
They in the guilt, he in the name must bleed.
While none shall dare his obsequies to sing
In deserv'd measures; until time shall bring
Truth crown'd with freedom, and from danger free
To sound his praises to posterity.
Here let him rest; while we this truth report,
He's gone from hence unto a higher Court
To plead his cause, where he by this doth know
Whether to Cæsar he was friend or foe.
Jamestown never recovered from the blow which Bacon dealt it. The location was so unhealthy that it could not attract new settlers, and though some of the houses which had been burned were subsequently rebuilt, the town's day of greatness was past. The seat of government was removed to Williamsburg, and the old settlement dropped gradually to decay.
ODE TO JAMESTOWN
Old cradle of an infant world,
In which a nestling empire lay,
Struggling awhile, ere she unfurled
Her gallant wing and soared away;
All hail! thou birthplace of the glowing west,
Thou seem'st the towering eagle's ruined nest!