And saved those climes where Freedom yet must reign-- Your bleeding soil this ardent task demands, Expel yon' thieves from these polluted lands, Expect no peace till haughty Britain yields, 'Till humbled Britons quit your ravaged fields-- Still to the charge that routed foe returns, The war still rages, and the battle burns-- No dull debates, or tedious counsels know, But rush at once, embodied, on your foe; With hell-born spite a seven years' war they wage, The pirate Goodrich, and the ruffian Gage. Your injured country groans while yet they stay, Attend her groans, and force their hosts away; Your mighty wrongs the tragic muse shall trace, Your gallant deeds shall fire a future race; To you may kings and potentates appeal, You may the doom of jarring nations seal; A glorious empire rises, bright and new! Firm be the structure, and must rest on you!-- Fame o'er the mighty pile expands her wings, Remote from princes, bishops, lords, and kings, Those fancied gods, who, famed through every shore, Mankind have fashioned, and like fools, adore. Here yet shall heaven the joys of peace bestow, While through our soil the streams of plenty flow, And o'er the main we spread the trading sail, Wafting the produce of the rural vale. [A] Alexander the Great.--_Freneau's note._ [B] A real event of that day: See REMEMBRANCER of 1777.--_Freneau's note._ [C] Miss M'Crea. See histories of the revolutionary war.--_Freneau's note._ "A most pathetic story was told of one Jenny M'Rea, murdered by Indians near Fort Edward. Her family were Loyalists; she herself was engaged to be married to a Loyalist officer. She was dressed to receive her lover when a party of Indians burst into the house, carried off the whole family to the woods, and there murdered, scalped, and mangled them in a most horrible manner."--_Hildreth's United States._ See also Irving's _Life of Washington_. Barlow, in the sixth book of the _Columbiad_, has given a poetic version of the story. [161] From the edition of 1809. The poem was written, according to the edition of 1786, in August, 1778. It was first published in conjunction with a work entitled "Travels of the Imagination," by Robert Bell of Philadelphia, and reissued twice by him during the same year. In this edition it bore the title, "American Independence an Everlasting Deliverance from British Tyranny. A Poem." Later were added the words. "By Philip F----u." [162] "Nor shall these upstarts of their loss complain, Since all the debt we owe to Britain's throne Was mere idea, and the rest our own."--_Ed. 1786._