Before our eyes the angry shades appear Of those, whose relics we this day inter: They live, they speak, reproach you, and complain Their lives were shorten'd by your galling chain: They aim their shafts, directed to your breast,-- Let rage, and fierce resentment tell the rest. These coffins, tokens of our last regard, These mouldering bones your vengeance might have spared.-- If once, in life, they met you on the main, If to your arms they yielded on the plain,-- Man, once a captive, all respect should claim That Britain gave, before her days of shame. How changed their lot! in floating dungeons thrown, They sigh'd unpitied, and relieved by none: In want of all that nature's wants demand, They met destruction from some traitor's hand, Who treated all with death or poison here, Or the last groan, with ridicule severe. A sickening languor to the soul returns And kindling passion at the motive spurns: The murders here, did we at length display Would more than paint an indian tyrant's sway: Then hush the theme, and to the dust restore These, once so wretched near Manhattan's shore, When tyrants ruled, whose hearts no mercy felt: In blood they wallow'd as in death they dealt. Thou who shalt come, by sad reflection taught, To seek on Nassau's isle this lonely vault; Think, when surveying this too gloomy scene, Think what, had heaven decreed, you might have been. When, with the rest, you pass'd the weary hour Chain'd or subjected to some ruffian's power, Think, as you see the sad procession pass'd, Think what these are, and you must be at last.-- Learn, as you hope to find your heart's applause, To love your country and respect her laws; Revere the sages, who your rights explain'd, Revere the patriots, who your cause sustain'd. Your country's Hero, rising to your view, Attend his precepts, and with care pursue, He first to shield you, rais'd his powerful arm, To honor steady as for freedom warm; When she relumed her half-extinguish'd fire, Then, not till then, did Washington retire, And left a light, a radiance to display, And mark his efforts, when he led the way. When war's long waste your independence crown'd And Hudson heard th' invigorating sound! His was the task; to him the part assign'd To paralize the vultures of mankind. Admit no tyrants, to debase your minds; Some selfish motive to all tyrants binds; If robed in ermine or in scarlet clad, The worst of idiots is a king run mad: And Rome's worst prince accomplish'd by a word No more, than by his councils, George the third!