Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· Literature, Principally Belletristic .
engendered among many colonists during the French and Indian War.
A typical stanza is
Shall We to British Blood lay Claim,
And not support the British Name?
Shall MarlbJrough's Battles be forgot,
And Slav'ry prove our willing Lot?
And the chorus begins with a resounding "No!"
Another Maryland patriotic poem, probably by Sterling, appeared in
the American Magazine (1 [April 1758}, 332-335), which in 124 lines
apparently compliments an unnamed American. References are made to
political corruption in the colonies and at home. Specially are named
several "genuine" British patriots, not American, for they best exemplified
for the poet the model public officials. A better poem is Sterling's majestic
elegiac "Epitaph on the Late Lord Howe," which appeared in the Maryland
Gazette, the New Hampshire Gazette, and the Boston Post Boy after its
initial printing in the American Magazine for September 1758 (I, 604-
605 ) . It
has been discussed above as representative of the southern elegiac
tradition. Another patriotic piece apparently by the same author, "Verses
Occasioned by the Success of the British Arms in the Year 1759," appeared
in the Maryland Gazette of January 3, 1760. It is an unusual poem, primarily
a depiction of the American farmer's agricultural routine and of
the progress of American civilization anticipating to some extent Crevecoeur's
"Andrew the Hebridean" in Letters from an American Farmer
(London, 1782 ). Fortunately eschewing the formal diction Sterling frequently
uses, it pictures "The Planter there amidst his swarthy Slaves" and
the felling of trees and clearing of ground in another example of the new
sort of pastoral life to be obtained in America.228 The section describing
growing corn (maize) suggests strongly Sidney Lanier's poem more than
a century later devoted entirely to "Corn." Overall, the poem is another
example of the translatio studii theme, for America is taking up where
Europe has left off.
Occasional verse is perhaps best represented in the Maryland Gazette
by tv"vo pieces apparently by Sterling, the "Prologue" and "Epilogue" for the
Orphan published in the issue of March 6, 1760, "by a Gentleman of This
Province, whose poetical Works have rendered him justly Admir'd by all
Encouragers of the Liberal Arts." The first of these two carries the translatio
studii or mundi theme of the future glory of America as it shows all
culture moving westward to the New World. The "Epilogue" is more concerned
with the moral of the play, with reference to its effect on planters of
Indian corn with puns on cuckoldom as "Crops of Horn."