| |
| HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, | |
| Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: | |
| The northern clime beneath her genial ray, | |
| Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: | |
| Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, | 5 |
| Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, | |
| While in thine hand with pleasure we behold | |
| The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold. | |
| Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies | |
| She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: | 10 |
| Soon as appear’d the Goddess long desir’d, | |
| Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d; | |
| Thus from the splendors of the morning light | |
| The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. | |
| |
| No more, America, in mournful strain | 15 |
| Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, | |
| No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, | |
| Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand | |
| Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land. | |
| |
| Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, | 20 |
| Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, | |
| Whence flow these wishes for the common good, | |
| By feeling hearts alone best understood, | |
| I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate | |
| Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat: | 25 |
| What pangs excruciating must molest, | |
| What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? | |
| Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d | |
| That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d: | |
| Such, such my case. And can I then but pray | 30 |
| Others may never feel tyrannic sway? | |
| |
| For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, | |
| And thee we ask thy favours to renew, | |
| Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before, | |
| To sooth the griefs, which thou did’st once deplore. | 35 |
| May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give | |
| To all thy works, and thou for ever live | |
| Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, | |
| Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name, | |
| But to conduct to heav’ns refulgent fane, | 40 |
| May fiery coursers sweep th’ ethereal plain, | |
| And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, | |
| Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God. | |
| |
