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What rests there yet of Continental Sway?
A ruin'd People ripe to disobey.
Hate now of men, and soon to be the
Jest;

Such is your fate, ye Monsters of the
West!

Yet must on every face a smile be worn, While every breast with agony is torn. Hopeless yourselves, yet hope you must impart,

And comfort others with an aching heart. Ill fated they who, lost at home, must boast

Of help expected from a foreign coast: How wretched is their lot, to France and Spain,

Who look for succor, but who look in vain.

160

THE AMERICAN TIMES
A Satire

IN THREE PARTS

Facit indignatis versum-Juvenal.

BY CAMILLO QUERNO

(DR. JONATHAN ODELL) Chaplain to the Congress. FROM PART I

When Faction, pois'nous as the scorpion's sting,

Infects the people, and insults the King; When foul Sedition skulks no more conceal'd,

But grasps the sword and rushes to the field;

When Justice, Law and Truth are in disgrace

And Treason, Fraud and Murder fill their place:

Smarting beneath accumulated woes, Shall we not dare the tyrants to expose? We will, we must-though mighty Laurens frown,

Or Hancock with his rabble hunt us down;

10

Champions of virtue, we'll alike disdain The guards of Washington, the lies of Paine,

And greatly bear, without one anxious throb,

The wrath of Congress, or its lords the mob.

Bad are the Times, almost too bad to paint;

The whole head sickens, the whole heart

is faint:

The State is rotten, rotten to the core 'Tis all one bruize, one putrefying sore. Here Anarchy before the gaping crowd Proclaims the people's majesty aloud; 20 There Folly runs with eagerness about, And prompt the cheated populace to shout;

Here paper-dollars meager Famine holds, There votes of Congress Tyranny unfolds;

With doctrines strange in matter and in dress,

The doctor's glister-pipe, the lawyer's quill,

Transform'd to guns, retain their pow'r to kill;

From garrets, cellars, rushing thro' the street,

The new-born statesmen in committee meet;

Legions of senators infest the land,
And mushroom generals thick as mush-

rooms stand.

So arm they did-the knave led on the fool;

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Good anger, spare me; I would fain be cool: Mixtures were seen amazing in their kind; Extravagance with cruelty was joined. The presbyterian with the convict march'd; The meeting-house was thinn'd, the gaol was search'd:

Servants were seiz'd, apprentices enroll'd: Youth guarded not the boy, nor age the old:

Tag, rag and bobtail issued on the foe, Marshal'd by generals-Ewin, Roberdeau.

This was not Reason-this was wildest rage,

To make the land one military stage: 140

This high and holy strain how true
Had now from age to age been shown;
And to the world's admiring view
Rose freedom's transatlantic throne:
Here, Britannia, here thy fame
Long did we with joy proclaim.

But ah! what frenzy breaks a band
Of love and union held so dear!
Rebellion madly shakes the land,
And love is turn'd to hate and fear.
Here, Britannia, here at last
We feel contagion's deadly blast.

Thus blind, alas, when all is well,
Thus blind are mortals here below:
As when apostate angels fell,
Ambition turns our bliss to woe.
Now, Britannia, now beware;
For other conflicts now prepare.

By thee controul'd for ages past,
See now half Europe in array:
For wild ambition hopes at last
To fix her long projected sway.
Rise, Britannia, rise again

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The scourge of haughty France and Spain!