William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
On the Proceedings against America“From a late London Magazine”
L
The world abounds with laws, and teems with crimes.
From justice fierce ambition wrests the sword;
Kings would be gods, and monarchs every lord.
Law, place, subjection, order, pride confounds,
And lust of rule despotic nothing bounds.
In vain, between this iron seat of power,
Where the state vultures every thing devour,
And the new world, where Freedom’s sons had fled,
And braved a desert with untented head,
The great Atlantic rolls its watery bar;
Oppression’s fatal dart can speed so far.
With vengeance pointed, see, it mounts the sky,
And law-pretensions give it wings to fly.
O’er violated charters Freedom weeps,
And keen suspicion constant vigils keeps.
Commerce, from frequent marts, no more her own,
Exiled, to foreign coasts compell’d is flown.
Our useless keels, with helm neglected, ride
Britannia’s bulwarks, and Britannia’s pride.
The hostile sword, dread thought! prepared we draw,
To rule by force—the tyrant’s only law.
With eye uplifted and with suppliant hands,
Her empire shaken, true religion stands,
With air astonish’d, trembling for her doom,
And hears, or seems to hear, the chains of Rome.
See, from the deep, Britannia’s genius rise,
Ardent in prayer, and thus address the skies:—
“Their freedom, Heaven! defend—avert the blow,
Crush the vile scheme, and lay the miscreants low
Who counsel give, or lift the impious hand,
To stab our country in a foreign land.
Inspire each patriot breast with tenfold zeal,
And for our refuge save their commonweal:
And teach each little monarch here below,
What tyrants ought to feel, or princes know.”