So spoke the Genius of the shaded wave, And then the vest of wondrous virtue gave, Which scarce my limbs enwrapt, when I began To move as ne'er before did mortal man. Light as the air, as free as winds I stray'd, Pierc'd firmest rocks and walls for prisons made, Soar'd high, nor ask'd the feeble aid of art, And trac'd all secrets but the human heart. Then to the town I held my hasty course, To Boston's town subdu'd by lawless force; Close by a centinel I took my stride, The wretch ne'er saw me tho' I graz'd his side: But for my vest, what pains had been my lot. What gibes, what sneers, reproaches, and what not? Or in their place the robbers had constrained To turn a Tory, which my heart disdained. Now stalk'd I on towards the dome of state, Where Gage resides, our western Potentate, A second Cortez,[a] sent by heaven's command, To murder, rage, and ravage o'er our land; A very Cortez--what's the difference? He wants his courage and he wants his sense; E'en Cortez would our tyrant's part disdain. That murder'd strangers; this his countrymen; In all the rest resemblance so exact, No glass Venetian could more true reflect. In all their rest, congenial souls combin'd, The scourge, the curse and scandal of our kind. Cortez was sent by Spain's black brotherhood, Whose faith is murder, whose religion blood; Sent unprovok'd, with his Iberian train, To fat the soil with millions of the slain: Poor Mexico! arouse thy sanguine head, Peru, disclose thy hosts of murder'd dead! Let your vast plains all white with human bones, That bleeding lie, and ask sepulchral stones, Force a dumb voice and echo to the sky, The blasting curse of papal tyranny; And let your rocks, and let your hills proclaim, That Gage and Cortez' errand is the same. Say then what cause this murd'rous band restrains? The want of power is made the monster's chains, The streams of blood his heart foredooms to spill, Is but a dying serpent's rage to kill: What power shall drive this serpent from our shore, This scorpion, swoln with carnage, death, and gore? Twelve was the hour,--infernal darkness reign'd, Low hung the clouds, the stars their light restrain'd: High in the dome a dire assembly sat, A stupid council on affairs of state; To their dim lamps I urg'd my fearless way, And marching 'twixt their guards without delay, Step'd boldly in, and safely veil'd from view, Stood in the center of the black-guard crew. First, Gage was there--a mimic chair of state, [a] Hernando Cortez, one of the original conquerors of Spanish America, who depopulated many provinces, and slew several millions of the natives of this continent. See Father Barthol. Du Casis's History.--_Freneau's note._