“Then o’er wide lands, as blissful Eden bright, Type of the skies, and seats of pure delight, Our sons with prosperous course shall stretch their sway, And claim an empire spread from sea to sea; In one great whole th’ harmonious tribes combine, Trace Justice’ path, and choose their chiefs divine; On Freedom’s base erect the heavenly plan. Teach laws to reign, and save the Rights of Man. Then smiling Art shall wrap the fields in bloom, Fine the rich ore, and guide the useful loom; Then lofty towers in golden pomp arise, Then spiry cities meet auspicious skies; The soul on Wisdom’s wing sublimely soar, New virtues cherish and new truths explore; Through Time’s long tract our name celestial run, Climb in the east and circle with the sun; And smiling Glory stretch triumphant wings O’er hosts of heroes and o’er tribes of kings.” A world of eighteenth-century thought, peopled with personifications, lay buried in the ten thousand lines of President Dwight’s youthful poem. Perhaps in the year 1800, after Jefferson’s triumph, Dwight would have been less eager that his hero should save the Rights of Man; by that time the phrase had acquired a flavor of French infidelity which made it unpalatable to good taste. Yet the same Jeffersonian spirit ran through Dwight’s famous national song, which was also written in the Revolutionary War:-- “Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world and child of the skies! . . . . . . . . Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend, And triumph pursue them, and glory attend. . . . . . . . . While the ensigns of union in triumph unfurled Hush the tumult of war and give peace to the world.” “Peace to the world” was the essence of Jeffersonian principles, worth singing in something better than jingling metre and indifferent rhyme; but President Dwight’s friends in 1800 no longer sang this song. More and more conservative as he grew older, he published in 1797 an orthodox “Triumph of Infidelity,” introduced by a dedication to Voltaire. His rebuke to mild theology was almost as severe as that to French deism:-- “There smiled the smooth divine, unused to wound The sinner’s heart with Hell’s alarming sound.” His poetical career reached its climax in 1794 in a clerical Connecticut pastoral in seven books, called “Greenfield Hill.” Perhaps his verses were not above the level of the Beatties and Youngs he imitated; but at least they earned for President Dwight no mean reputation in days when poetry was at its lowest ebb, and made him the father of a school.