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 disown

Such friends, subservient to a bankrupt

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!
O may I never feel the poignant pain
To live subjected to such fiends again, 80
Stewards and Mates that hostile Britain
bore,

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'dNo drop was granted to the midnight prayer,

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To Dives in these regions of despair!The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains,

Its poison circling through the languid veins;

That charm, whose virtue warms the world beside,

Was by these tyrants to our use denied, While yet they deign'd that healthy juice to lade

The putrid water felt its powerful aid; But when refus'd-to aggravate our pains

Then fevers rag'd and revel'd through our veins;

Throughout my frame I felt its deadly heat,

I felt my pulse with quicker motions beat:

A pallid hue o'er every face was spread,
Unusual pains attack'd the fainting head,
No physic here, no doctor to assist,
My name was enter'd on the sick man's

list;

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With him advanc'd the Countess bold, Like a black tar in wars grown old; And now these floating piles drew nigh;