Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.

Return of Peace

GROWN sick of war and war’s alarms,

Good George has changed his note at last:

Conquest and death have lost their charms—

He and his nation stand aghast

To see what horrid lengths they’ve gone,

And what a brink they stand upon.

Old Bute and North, twin sons of hell,

If you’d advised him to retreat

Before our humbled thousands fell,

And lay, submissive, at his feet—

Awake, once more, his latent fire,

And feed with hope his heart’s desire.

Let jarring powers make war or peace,

Monster!—no peace shall greet thy breast!

Our murder’d friends shall never cease

To hover round and break thy rest.

The furies shall thy bosom tear—

Remorse, distraction, and despair,

And hell, with all its fiends, be there.

Genius, that first our race design’d!

To other kings impart

The finer feelings of the mind,

The virtues of the heart:

Whene’er the honours of a throne

Fall to the bloody and the base,

Like Britain’s monster, pull them down—

Like his be their disgrace!

Hibernia, seize each native right!

Neptune, exclude him from the main:

Like her, that sunk with all her freight,

The Royal George, take all his fleet,

And never let them rise again:

Confine him to his gloomy isle,

Let Scotland rule her half,

Spare him to curse his fate a while,

And, Whitehead, thou to write his epitaph.