Before passing to the more serious examples, I bring into group a few
marking at least a poet’s appreciation of the newly discovered country,
if not a prophetic spirit. The Muse was not silent at the various
reports. As early as 1595, Chapman, famous as the translator of Homer,
in a poem on Guiana, thus celebrates and commends the unknown land:--
“Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold,
Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars,
Stands on her tiptoes, at fair England looking,
Kissing her hand, bowing her mighty breast,
And every sign of all submission making,
To be her sister, and the daughter both
Of our most sacred Maid.
…
And there do palaces and temples rise
Out of the earth and kiss the enamored skies,
Where New Britannia humbly kneels to Heaven,
The world to her, and both at her blest feet
In whom the circles of all empire meet.”[256]
In similar strain, Drayton, who flourished under James the First, says
of Virginia:--
“And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth’s only paradise.
“Where Nature hath in store
Fowl, venison, and fish,
And the fruitfull’st soil,
Without your toil,
Three harvests more,
All greater than your wish.
…
“To whose the Golden Age
Still Nature’s laws doth give,
No other cares that ’tend
But them to defend
From winter’s age,
That long there doth not live.”[257]
Daniel, poet-laureate and contemporary, seemed to foresee the spread of
our English speech, anticipating our own John Adams:--
“And who (in time) knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T’ enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds, in th’ yet unformèd Occident,
May come refined with th’ accents that are ours?”[258]
The emigration prompted by conscience and for the sake of religious
liberty inspired the pious and poetical Herbert to famous verses:--
“Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.”[259]
The poet died in 1632, twelve years after the landing of the Pilgrims
at Plymouth, and only two years after the larger movement of the
Massachusetts Company, which began the settlement of Boston. The verses
saw the light with difficulty, being refused the necessary license;
but the functionary at last yielded, calling the author “a divine
poet,” and expressing the hope that “the world will not take him to
be an inspired prophet.”[260] Fuller, writing a little later, was
perhaps moved by Herbert, when he said: “I am confident that America,
though the youngest sister of the four, is now grown marriageable,
and daily hopes to get Christ to her husband by the preaching of the
Gospel.”[261] In a different vein, a contemporary poet, the favorite of
Charles the First, Thomas Carew, in a masque performed by the monarch
and his courtiers at Whitehall, February 18, 1633, made sport of New
England, saying that it had “purged more virulent humors from the
politic body than guaiacum and all the West Indian drugs have from the
natural bodies of this kingdom.”[262] But these words uttered at the
English Court were praise.
Then came answering voices from the Colonies. Rev. William Morrell, of
the Established Church, a settler of 1623, said of New England, in a
Latin poem translated by himself:--
“_A grandchild to Earth’s paradise is born_,
Well-limbed, well-nerved, fair, rich, sweet, yet forlorn.”[263]
“The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” another name for Rev. Nathaniel Ward,
of Ipswich, Mass., at the close of his witty book, first published in
1647, and having four different editions in this single year, sends an
invitation to those at home:--
“So farewell, England Old!
If evil times ensue,
Let good men come to us,
We’ll welcome them to New.”
Another witness we meet in the writings of Franklin. It is George Webb,
who, decamping from Oxford and the temptations of scholarship, indented
himself according to the usage of the times, and became what Franklin
calls “a bought servant” on our shores, where his genius flowered in
the prophetic couplet, written in 1727:--
“Europe shall mourn her ancient fame declined,
_And Philadelphia be the Athens of mankind_.”[264]
Another, Gulian Verplanck, of New York, in verses written in England in
1773, foretells the repetition of British wealth, power, and glory in
the New World:--
“In other worlds another Britain see,
And what thou art America shall be.”[265]
And yet another, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, born in Scotland, and a
graduate of our Princeton College in 1771, in a Commencement poem on
“The Rising Glory of America,” pictured the future of the continent,
adopting as a motto the verses of Seneca twice quoted by Columbus:--
“This is thy praise, America, thy power,
Thou best of climes by Science visited,
By Freedom blest, and richly stored with all
The luxuries of life! Hail, happy land,
The seat of empire, the abode of kings,
The final stage where Time shall introduce
Renownèd characters, and glorious works
Of high invention and of wondrous art,
Which not the ravages of Time shall waste,
Till he himself has run his long career!”[266]
To these add Voltaire, who, in his easy verse, written in 1751,
represents God as putting fever in European climates, “and the remedy
in America.”[267]
From this chorus, with only one discordant voice, I pass to a long line
of voices so distinct and full as to be recognized separately.