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Chapter 2.

IV. POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION: SATIRES, EPICS, AND BALLADS.

The Revolutionary period was not without its poets. From the beginning of the conflict, in 1775, to the end, there was a copious flow of verse which sprang naturally enough from the turbulence of popular excitement and emotion. Here and there among the crude productions of these unschooled rhymers, one comes upon compositions which show an unexpected strength of feeling expressed with considerable literary art. This is especially true of the political satires and the ballads which are conspicuous in Revolutionary literature.

Jonathan Odell, 1737-1818.

Foremost among the tory versifiers -- for both parties in the contest had their literary champions in metre as in prose -- was Jonathan Odell, who invoked the muse thus: --

"Grant me for a time
Some deleterious powers of acrid rhyme,
Some ars'nic verse, to poison with the pen
These rats who nestle in the lion's den."

Odell came of pioneer Puritan stock and was himself a native of New Jersey. he was a graduate of Princeton, and became a surgeon in the British army. He later went to England, where he took orders for the Church.

Returning to New Jersey, he became rector of the parish in Burlington. With the outbreak of hostilities, and the development of violence against all suspected of royalist sympathies, the clergyman was forced to take flight; and as a refugee, he remained in New York until the evacuation of the British troops.

Odell's literary talent was soon engaged in the composition of satiric poems; modeled on the satires of Dryden and Pope, they show considerable merit. Odell wrote with a trenchant pen. There is no humor in his satire -- it is wit, caustic, biting; the tone of his verse is the tone of bitter, implacable invective. Four satires, all written in 1779, furnish the best examples of his verse: The Word of Congress, The Congratulation, The Feu de Joie, and The American Times. The following lines from the last of his satires are sufficient to exhibit his skill in satire and in verse:--

"What cannot ceaseless impudence produce?
Old Franklin knows its value and its use:
He caught at Paine, relieved his wretched plight,
And gave him notes, and set him down to write.
Fire from the Doctor's hints the miscreant took,
Discarded truth, and soon produced a book, --
A pamphlet which, without the least pretence
To reason, bore the name of Common Sense.
... ............
The work like wildfire, through the country ran,
And Folly bowed the knee to Franklin's plan.
Sense, reason, judgment were abashed and fled,
And Congress reigned triumphant in their stead."

Persistent in his attitude, irreconcilable and belligerent still, Jonathan Odell forsook the colonies at the close of the contest and migrated to Nova Scotia, where he lived to old age, unconvinced and unrelenting to the last.

The Hartford Wits.

Three Revolutionary poets of large and serious purpose, and widely famed in their generation, may be grouped together, not only because of some similarity in their verse, but also because they were all Connecticut men; two were conspicuous members of a coterie noted as "the Hartford Wits." That Connecticut town, indeed, enjoyed a reputation as a literary centre through the exploits of this group. The two Hartford poets were John Trumbull and Joel Barlow; the third of this group was Timothy Dwight.

John Trumbull, 1750-1831.

Trumbull's contribution was a long satire, a burlesque epic, entitled McFingal. It was modeled on Butler's Hudibras -- a famous English satire of the seventeenth century directed at the Puritans. The Yankee poet, borrowing the rollicking measure of the earlier satirist, narrates the misadventures of his hero -- a tory squire in the midst of patriots. The poem first appeared in January, 1776, was afterward expanded and reappeared, in four cantos, in 1782. McFingal is full of native Yankee wit and humor, and contains many clever couplets -- couplets which have passed for Butler's:--

"No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law;
Or held in method orthodox
His love of justice in the stocks;
Or failed to lose by sheriff's shears
At once his loyalty and ears."

So popular was this merry epic, McFingal, that it ran to thirty editions. It was a source of joy in the camps of the Continentals, and nerved the arm of many a tired soldier in the ranks.

Joel Barlow, 1754-1812.

Still more ambitious was the effort of Joel Barlow, who published, in 1787, his Vision of Columbus. In 1807, the completed work appeared under the epic title The Columbiad. It was a prodigious poem, intended to be a second Iliad. Following a plan employed by Milton in the eleventh book of Paradise Lost, Columbus is led to the hill of Vision and is shown the future greatness of the land he had discovered. The patriotic fervor of the author is intense.

"I sing the mariner who first unfurled
An eastern banner o'er the western world,
And taught mankind where future empire lay
In these fair confines of descending day."

In 1793, Barlow composed in lighter vein another poem which has outlived the ponderous epic. This is the happy composition in honor of Hasty Pudding, one of our best examples of light and fanciful verse. The poem was written when Barlow was abroad in Savoy, and was dedicated to no less a personage than Lady Martha Washington. The poet still uses the heroic couplet, this time in mock-heroic strain; and the humorous realism of his rural scenes is no less attractive to the modern reader than it was to those who first enjoyed the poet's glorification of this homely theme. Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.

The third writer in this group, Timothy Dwight, was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards; and he became in time the president of Yale College. The subject of his epic -- for his inspiration was also epical -- is Religion. It was entitled The Conquest of Canaan; and it appeared in 1785. It is described by its author as "the first of the kind which has been published in this country." The spirit of the Revolution is felt in the treatment of even this ancient theme; and the ingenious device by which the great event of American history in the latter part of the eighteenth century is linked with this epic recital of Israelitish wars is very amusing.

Timothy Dwight was, like his grandfather Edwards, a man of marvelous energy and of great literary productiveness; he inherited, however, none of the genius which distinguished Jonathan Edwards's scholarly work. His Theology Explained and Defined, in five volumes, does not resemble the famous treatise on The Freedom of the Will. The most interesting example of his prose is the Travels in New England and New York -- four volumes of letters fictitiously addressed to an English correspondent, and filled with observations made during his summer travels in his gig.

In 1777 and 1778, Dwight served as an army chaplain and employed his lyric gifts with patriotic fervor. His best remembered song, Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, was the fruit of this period. The fact that he was the author also of the hymn, I Love thy Kingdom, Lord, should certainly not be forgotten. In Greenfield Hill (1794) we find a very interesting attempt at a descriptive as well as didactic poem. It is in frank imitation of the English classic poets, Pope, Denham, Thomson, Goldsmith, but shows some touches distinctively American. Revolutionary Songs and Ballads.

Among the most interesting compositions of the Revolutionary period, are the numerous songs and ballads, hundreds of which were written during the years of the war. Many of these were mere doggerel, but some -- as such songs of the people often are -- were characterized by a homely, hearty strain, which in spite of crudity bears its own appeal, and stirs the passion of men without the aid of art. The names of their writers were often unknown even in that generation. Sometimes these compositions took the form of camp-songs like that to The Volunteer Boys (1780): --

"Hence with the lover who sighs o'er his wine,
   Chloes and Phillises toasting,
Hence with the slave who will whimper and whine,
   Of ardor and constancy boasting.
Hence with love's joys,
Follies and noise,--
The toast that I give is the Volunteer Boys," etc.

Sometimes they are religious songs, one of the best examples of which is found in The american Soldier's Hymn:--

"'T is God that girds our armor on,
   And all our just designs fulfils.
Through Him our feet can swiftly run,
   And nimbly climb the steepest hills.

"Lessons of war from Him we take,
   And manly weapons learn to wield;
Strong bows of steel with ease we break,
   Forced by our stronger arms to yield," etc.

But more numerous were the narratives in crude and vigorous verse of battle, of incident, and of individual exploit, such as we find in an anonymous poem on the Battle of Trenton (December 26, 1776). The historic crossing of the Delaware is mentioned in the opening stanza: --

"On Christmas-day in seventy-six,
Our ragged troops with bayonets fixed
   For Trenton marched away.
The Delaware see! the boats below!
The light obscured by hail and snow!
   But no sign of dismay."

In each of the six stanzas which compose the song, there is some clever tough which reveals the real poetic impulse -- none the less effective because of its artlessness.

"Great Washington he led us on,
Whose streaming flag, in storm or sun,
   Had never known disgrace.

"In silent march we passed the night,
Each soldier panting for the fight,
   Though quite benumbed with frost."

The account of the action is very brief, the surprise, the victory, the trophies of battle are tersely described, and the song closes in conventional style:--

"Now, brothers of the patriot bands,
Let's sing deliverance from the hands
   Of arbitrary sway.
And as our life is but a span,
Let's touch the tankard while we can,
   In memory of that day."

One of the best naval ballads of the time was The Yankee Man of War, a stirring record of an exploit in 1778, wherein the bravery of John Paul Jones is enthusiastically celebrated. Its unknown author writes with the precision of one well versed in sea-craft, and like an eye-witness of the incident.

"`Out booms! out booms!' our skipper cried,
   `out booms and give her sheet.'
And the swiftest keel that was ever launched
   shot ahead of the British fleet,
And a-midst a thundering shower of shot
   with stun'sails hoisting away,
Down the North Channel Paul Jones did steer
   just at the break of day."

Scores of these spirited little lyrics may be read in the collections of Revolutionary songs. The patriotic fervor of the singer is often more impressive than the inspiration of his muse, and yet there are not a few poems in the group which may claim a place in our national literature.

Francis Hopkinson, 1737-91.

The humorous balled on The Battle of the Kegs illustrates another phase of this patriotic activity in verse. The author of these rollicking lines was Francis Hopkinson, a man prominent in all the serious and weighty movements of these momentous times, yet full of vivacity and an irresistible humor which frequently broke forth in trenchant satire and clever verse. In The Battle of the Kegs, his irrepressible wit runs merry riot. The incident which inspired the ballad belongs to the beginning of 1778. Some Yankee inventor having constructed a sort of infernal machine for the purpose, a lot of kegs were equipped with the mechanism and charged with powder; these kegs were then sent floating down the Delaware toward Philadelphia, where the British force under Howe was quartered for the winter. Whether actually dangerous or not, these suspicious-looking kegs caused great excitement as they came floating by the city and provoked a general bombardment from ships and garrison. No harm resulted to the English from this fleet of Yankee invention, but Hopkinson's doggerel rhymes which followed appear to have had a most beneficent effect upon the Continentals. The ballad proved to be the most popular composition of the war period, and its influence is thus described by Tyler: --

"It gave the weary and anxious people the luxury of genuine and hearty laughter in very scorn of the enemy. To the cause of the Revolution it was perhaps worth as much, just then, by way of emotional tonic and of military inspiration as the winning of a considerable battle would have been."

Francis Hopkinson's impassioned Camp Ballad (1777) exhibits the real lyric power of the poet in his serious mood. Columbia, written by Timothy Dwight, belongs to the same group of patriotic lyrics. Dwight's poem begins with the lines:--

"Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies."

It is not to be confused with the national song Hail Columbia, which was written by Joseph Hopkinson (not Francis) in 1798. If popularity were a standard of excellence, these fervid compositions, along with The Battle of the Kegs and The Yankee's Return from Camp ("Yankee Doodle"), would have to represent the poetic accomplishment of our Revolutionary poets; happily this is not the case. Bold Hathorne, the Surgeon's record of the cruise of the "Fair American," Captain Hathorne, 1777, has the homely flavor of an honest folk-song, and so has the ballad of Brave Paulding and the Spy, which celebrates the patriotic integrity of the captor of Major André; but the best of all these patriotic compositions is one entitled bush Hale in the Bush, a wonderfully tender and impressive tribute to the memory of Nathan Hale, captured and hanged by the British as a spy. This remarkable poem merits quotation in full.

HALE IN THE BUSH

The breezes went steadily through the tall pines,
A-saying "oh! hu-ush!" a-saying "oh! hu-ush!"
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse,
For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush.

"Keep still!" said the thrush, as she nestled her young
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road.
"For the tyrants are near, and with them appear
What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good."

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home
In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the brook.
With mother and sister and memories dear,
he so gaily forsook, he so gaily forsook.

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace,
The tattoo had beat, the tattoo had beat;
The noble one sprang from his dark lurking place,
To make his retreat, to make his retreat.

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves,
As he passed through the wood, as he passed through the wood;
And silently gained his rude launch on the shore,
As she played with the flood, as she played with the flood.

The guards of the camp on that dark dreary night,
Had a murderous will, had a murderous will;
They took him and bore him after from the shore,
To a hut on the hill, to a hut on the hill.

No mother was there, nor a friend who could cheer,
In that little stone cell, in that little stone cell;
But he trusted in love from his Father above --
In his heart all was well, in his heart all was well.

An ominous owl with his solemn bass voice,
Sat moaning hard by, sat moaning hard by:
"The tyrant's proud minions most gladly rejoice,
For he must soon die, for he must soon die."

The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained,--
The cruel general! the cruel general!--
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained,
And said that was all, and said that was all.

They took him and bound him and bore him away,
Down the hill's grassy side, down the hill's grassy side.
'T was there the base hirelings, in royal array,
His cause did deride, his cause did deride.

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more,
For him to repent, for him to repent.
He prayed for his mother -- he asked not another, --
To Heaven he went, to Heaven he went.

The faith of a martyr the tragedy showed,
As he trod the last stage, as he trod the last stage.
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood,
As his words do presage, as his words do presage.

"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe,
Go frighten the slave, go frighten the slave;
Tell tyrants, to you their allegiance they owe--
No fears for the brave, no fears for the brave!"

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Chapter 1: I | II | III | IV | Chapter 2: I | II | III | IV | V | Chapter 3: I | II | III | IV | Chapter 4: I | II | III | IV | V | Chapter 5: I | II | III | IV | Chapter 6: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | Chapter 7: I | II | III | IV |