Poor savage man! for him no yellow grain
Waves its bright billows o'er the fruitful plain;
For him no harvest yields its full supply,
When winter hurls his tempest through the sky.
No joys he knows but those which spring from strife,
Unknown to him the charms of social life.
Rage, malice, envy, all his thoughts control,
And every dreadful passion burns his soul.
Should culture meliorate his darksome home,
And cheer those wilds where he is wont to roam;
* * * * *
Should fields of tillage yield their rich increase,
And through his wastes walk forth the arts of peace,
His sullen soul would feel a genial glow,
Joy would break in upon the night of woe;
Knowledge would spread her mild, reviving ray,
And on his wigwam rise the dawn of day.
[Footnote 78: A Presbyterian clergyman, who died prematurely; an
associate and connection of Charles Brockden Brown. Has left several
poems of merit. A native of Pennsylvania.]
* * * * *
=_Francis S. Key, 1779-1843._= (Manual, p. 523.)
=_324._= THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming;
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
On that shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war, and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
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