Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Now driven to wars, and now oppress’d at home,
Compell’d in crowds o’er distant seas to roam,
From India’s climes the plundered prize to bring
To glad the strumpet, or to glut the king.
Columbia, hail! immortal be thy reign:
Without a king, we till the smiling plain;
Without a king, we trace the unbounded sea,
And trac round the globe, through each degree;
Each foreign clime our honour’d ag reveres,
Which asks no monarch, to support the Stars:
Without a king, the Laws maintain their sway,
While honour bids each generous heart obey.
Be ours the task the ambitious to restrain,
And this great lesson teach—that kings are vain;
That warring realms to certain ruin haste,
That kings subsist by war, and wars are waste:
So shall our nation, form’d on Virtue’s plan,
Remain the guardian of the Rights of Man,
A vast Republic, fam’d through every clime,
Without a king, to see the end of time.
3.13.4 “A Political Litany”
(1775)
Libera Nos, Domine.—Deliver us, O Lord, not only from British dependence, but
also
From a junto that labour with absolute power,
Whose schemes disappointed have made them look sour,
From the lords of the council, who ght against freedom,
Who still follow on where delusion shall lead them.
From the group at St. James’s, who slight our petitions,
And fools that are waiting for further submissions—
From a nation whose manners are rough and severe,
From scoundrels and rascals,—do keep us all clear.
From pirates sent out by command of the king
To murder and plunder, but never to swing.
From Wallace and Greaves, and Vipers and Roses,
Whom, if heaven pleases, we’ll give bloody noses.
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