William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Stanzas: Beneath these banks, along this shorePhilip Freneau (17521832)
B
And underneath the waters, more
Forgotten corpses rest—
More bones, by cruelty consign’d
To death, than shall be told mankind
To chill the feeling breast:
In floating dungeons, anchor’d near,
A prey to fierce disease,
Than Fame, in her recording page,
Will tell some late inquiring age,
When telling things like these.
What spectre forms, what moving moans,
What woes on woes were found!
When here oppress’d, insulted, cross’d,
The vigour of the soul was lost
In miseries thickening round.
To climate nor to coast confined,
All misery taught to bear—
I saw them as the sail they spread,
I saw them by misfortune led
To capture and to care.
They climb’d the well-supported mast,
And reef’d the fluttering sail:
Though thunders roar’d and lightnings glared,
They toil nor death nor danger fear’d—
They braved the loudest gale.
Thou, Freedom, bade their spirits glow!
But, forced at last to yield,
Died in despair each sickening crew:
They vanish’d from the world: but you,
Columbia, kept the field.
They scarcely found a shallow tomb
To hide the naked bones:
For, feeble was the nervous hand
That once could toil, or once command
The force of Neptune’s sons.
Which spurn’d at England’s tyrant laws,
These pass’d the troubled main:
They dared the seas she call’d her own,
To meet the ruffians of a throne,
And honour’s purpose gain.
To war the brave adventurers moved,
And catch’d the seaman’s art—
Met, on their own domain, the crew
Of foreign slaves, that never knew
The independent heart.
The efforts of the brave were thine,
When, doubtful all, and dark,
It was a chaos to explore—
It seemed all sea without a shore,
Nor on that sea an ark.
Too often met an early grave,
Unnoticed and unknown:
On naked shores were seen to lie,
In scorching heats were doom’d to die
With agonizing groan.
Disease, which hosts of life deprived,
That life they should devote
To venture all in Freedom’s cause,
To combat tyrants and their laws,
So felt near this sad spot.
(We swear by all that’s great in man,)
That spirit shall go on,
To brighten and illume the mind,
Till tyrants vanish from mankind,
And tyranny is done.