Or, like our James, fly basely from the state, Or share, what still is worse. old Charles's fate. United States Magazine, May, 1779. THE BRITISH PRISON SHIP1 CANTO II The various horrors of these hulks to tell, These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell, Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign, And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd, complain; This be my task-ungenerous Britons, you Conspire to murder those you can't subdue. Weak as I am, I'll try my strength today And my best arrows at these hell-hounds play, To future years one scene of death prolong, And hang them up to infamy, in song. 10 That Britain's rage should dye our plains with gore, And desolation spread through every shore, None e'er could doubt, that her ambition knew, This was to rage and disappointment due; But that those monsters whom our soil maintain'd, Who first drew breath in this devoted land, Like famish'd wolves, should on their country prey, Assist its foes, and wrest our lives away, This shocks belief-and bids our soil dis There, the black Scorpion at her mooring rides, There, Strombolo swings, yielding to the tides; Here, bulky Jersey fills a larger space, And Hunter, to all hospitals disgrace- 60 Thou, Scorpion, fatal to thy crowded throng, Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song, Requir'st my lay-thy sultry decks I know, And all the torments that exist below! The briny waves that Hudson's bosom fills Drain'd through her bottom in a thousand rills, Rotten and old, replete with sighs and groans, Scarce on the waters she sustain'd her bones; Here, doom'd to toil, or founder in the Rebellions manag'd so unlike their own! Cut from the gallows on their native shore; Their ghastly looks and vengeance-beaming eyes Still to my view in dismal colours riseO may I ne'er review these dire abodes, These piles for slaughter, floating on the floods, And you, that o'er the troubled ocean go, Strike not your standards to this miscreant foe, Better the greedy wave should swallow all, 89 Better to meet the death-conducted ball, Better to sleep on ocean's deepest bed, At once destroy'd and number'd with the dead, Than thus to perish in the face of day there, 110 Meagre and wan, and scorch'd with heat below, We loom'd like ghosts, ere death had made us so How could we else, where heat and hunger join'd Thus to debase the body and the mind, Where cruel thirst the parching throat invades, Dries up the man, and fits him for the shades. No waters laded from the bubbling spring To these dire ships the British monsters bring By planks and ponderous beams completely wall'd In vain for water, and in vain, I call'd— No drop was granted to the midnight prayer, 121 To Dives in these regions of despair!The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains, Its poison circling through the languid. veins; |