Their phantoms, their wizzards, their witches are fled, Matthew Paris's[F] story with horror is read-- His daughters, and all the enchantments they bore-- And the demon, that pinched them, is heard of no more. [F] See Neale's History of New England.--_Freneau's note._ Their taste for the fine arts is strangely increased, And Latin's no longer a mark of the beast: Mathematics, at present, a farmer may know, Without being hanged for connections below. Proud, rough, Independent, undaunted and free, And patient of hardships, their task is the sea, Their country too barren their wish to attain, They make up the loss by exploring the main. Wherever bright Phoebus awakens the gales I see the bold Yankees expanding their sails, Throughout the wide ocean pursuing their schemes, And chacing the whales on its uttermost streams. No climate, for them, is too cold or too warm, They reef the broad canvass, and fight with the storm; In war with the foremost their standards display, Or glut the loud cannon with death, for the fray. No valour in fable their valour exceeds, Their spirits are fitted for desperate deeds; No rivals have they in our annals of fame, Or if they are rivalled, 'tis York has the claim. Inspired at the sound, while the name she repeats, Bold Fancy conveys me to Hudson's retreats-- Ah, sweet recollection of juvenile dreams In the groves, and the forests that skirted his streams! How often, with rapture, those streams were surveyed, When, sick of the city, I flew to the shade-- How often the bard, and the peasant shall mourn Ere those groves shall revive, or those shades shall return! Not a hill, but some fortress disfigures it round! And ramparts are raised where the cottage was found! The plains and the vallies with ruin are spread, With graves in abundance, and bones of the dead. The first that attempted to enter the streight (In anno one thousand six hundred and eight) Was Hudson (the same that we mentioned before, Who was lost in the gulph that he went to explore.) For a sum that they paid him (we know not how much) This captain transferred all his right to the Dutch; For the time has been here, (to the world be it known,) When all a man sailed by, or saw, was his own. The Dutch on their purchase sat quietly down, And fixed on an island to lay out a town; They modelled their streets from the horns of a ram, And the name that best pleased them was, New Amsterdam. They purchased large tracts from the Indians for beads, And sadly tormented some runaway Swedes, Who (none knows for what) from their country had flown, To live here in peace, undisturbed and alone. New Belgia, the Dutch called their province, be sure, But names never yet made possession secure, For Charley (the second that honoured the name) Sent over a squadron, asserting his claim: