Literature, Principally Belletristic - University of Tennessee, Knoxville

· INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH '
only a few issues survive, and that there is no known volwne of verse from
the colony published in Britain before 1764 are among the reasons for or
evidences of the scarcity. The earliest poem known is that datelined from
North Carolina May 18, 1737, and published in the South-Carolina Gazette
of June II, 1737. It is appropriately a poem on liberty, a piece imitated
or commented upon on July 25 in the New York Weekly Journal. The
allusions in this southern poem are really too vague for any positive
identification.
As blustering Winds disturb the calmest Sea
And all the Waters rave and mutiny:
The Billows loudly of the W rang complain
And make an Insurrection in the Main,
The watery Troops insult the lofty Clouds
And heave themselves in huge rebellious Crowds;
Tho' the tumultous rage our Wonder draws
The Water's not to blame, the Wind's the Cause;
The Inclination's all to Calms and Peace:
The Cause remov'd, the Grievance is redrest
And Nature glides the willing Waves to rest.
So Tyrants drive the People to Extreams,
And they that still stand out, it still inflames;
But when the End's obtain'd, they always shew
The honest Reasons of the Thing They do,
When Power's reduc'd the Motions always cease,
All tends to Settlements, and all to Peace.
The Moravians, who had established themselves in the communities of
Betharaba and Bethania in their great Wachovia Tract, welcomed in November
1755 their first group of married couples. The setting for the poem
-for music written for the occasion-is recorded in their official journal
of November 4. After the blowing of trwnpets and amidst an evening
Lovefeast, they opened the services by singing the verses written for this
moment, two stanzas in German of eight lines each : "Willkommen in
Wachovia / gesegnete Geschwester!" The composer remains anonymous,
but he was surely one of the clergymen who wrote music as well as they
did lyrics. It is not bad religious verse in the original or in translation.
A third colonial poem is the hymn of thanksgiving composed by the
versatile Governor Arthur Dobbs mentioned above, ordered to be sung to
the tune of "the 100 Psalm" in all churches (probably Anglican only ) of
the colony to celebrate the "end" of troubles with the Cherokees and
French. It was enclosed in a letter of October 31, 1759, to William Pitt the
elder, secretary of state, a letter which includes a statement of the necessity