Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Lines Addressed to Governor Parr

THE SAILOR, toss’d on stormy seas,

Implores his patron god for ease,

When Luna hides her paler blaze,

And stars obscurely dart their rays.

For ease the Yankee, fierce in war,

His stores of vengeance points afar;

For ease the toiling Dutchman sighs,

Which gold, nor gems, nor purple buys.

No treasured heaps from India trade,

No doctor’s or the lawyer’s aid

Can ease the tumults of the mind,

Or cares to gilded roofs assign’d.

The lot to man he best completes

Whose board is crown’d with frugal treats,

Whose sleep no fears, nor thirst of gain,

Beneath his homely roof, restrain.

Why, then, with wasting cares engage,

Weak reptiles of so frail an age?

Why thus to distant climates run,

And lands beneath another sun?

For, though to China’s coasts we roam,

Ourselves we ne’er can leave at home:

Care, swift as deer, as tempests strong,

Ascends the prow, and sails along.

The mind that feels an even state,

And all the future leaves to fate,

In every ill shall pleasure share,

As every pleasure has its care.

Death early seal’d Montgomery’s doom,

In youth brave Laurens found a tomb,

While Arnold spends in peace and pride

The years that Heaven to them denied.

A hundred slaves before you fall,

A coach and six is at your call,

And vestments, tinged with Tyrian dye,

Where’er you go, attract the eye.

On me a poor and small domain,

With something of the rhyming vein

The muse bestow’d—and share of pride

To spurn a traitor from my side.