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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Poor outcast slave!—Our guilty land
Should tremble while she drinks thy tears,
Or sees in vengeful silence stand,
The beacon of thy shorten’d years;—
Should shrink to hear her sons proclaim
The sacred truth that heaven is just,—
Shrink even at her Judge’s name,—
“Jehovah,—Saviour of the opprest.”
The Sun upon thy forehead frown’d,
But Man more cruel far than he,
Dark fetters on thy spirit bound:—
Look to the mansions of the free!
Look to that realm where chains unbind,—
Where the pale tyrant drops his rod,
And where the patient suerers nd
A friend,—a father in their God
4.6.2 “Indian Names”
(1834)
“How can the Red men be forgotten, while so many of our states and territories,
bays, lakes and rivers, are indelibly stamped by names of their giving?”
Ye say, they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From o the crested wave;
That ‘mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter shout;
But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.
‘Tis where Ontario’s billow
Like Ocean’s surge is curl’d.
Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake
The echo of the world.
Where red Missouri bringeth
Rich tribute from the west.
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps
On green Virginia’s breast.
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