“A Political Reverie” (1774)
“A Political Reverie” (1774)
by Mercy Otis Warren
As fairy forms, the elfin airy train,
And sylphs, sometimes molest the learned brain,
Delusive dreams the matron’s bosom swell,
And, ancient maids, the fancied vision, tell;
So beaux and belles see routs and balls in dreams,
And drowsy preachers chop polemic themes;
The statesman’s dream, in theory creates,
New perfect forms, to govern broken states.
Logistic scribblers dream of sleeping souls,
And dreaming bucks drown reason o’er their bowls;
The doubting deist dreams of Styx and fate,
Yet laughs at fables of a future state,
‘Till Charon’s boat shall land him on a shore
Of which the dreamer never dreamt before:
As sportive dreams infest all ranks of men,
A dream, the visionary world, may read again.
Let Grecian bards and Roman poets tell,
How Hector fought, and how old Priam fell;
Paint armies ravaging the ‘Ilian coast,
Shew fields of blood and mighty battles lost;
Let mad Cassandra, with dishevell’d hair,
With streaming eye, and frantic bosom bare,
Tell dark presages, and ill boding dreams,
Of murder, rapine, and the solemn themes,
Of slaughter’d cities, and their sinking spires,
By Grecian rage wrap’d in avening fires;
To bolder pens I leave the tragic tale,
While some kind muse from Tempe’s gentle vale,
With softer symphony shall touch the string,
And happier tidings from Parnassus bring.
Not Cæsar’s name, nor Philip’s bolder son,
Who sigh’d and wept, when he’d one world undone;
Who drop’d a tear, though not from pity’s source,
But grief, to find some bound to brutal force,
Shall tune my harp, or touch the warbling string;
No bold destroyers of mankind I sing;
These plunderers of men I’ll greatly scorn,
And dream of nations, empires yet unborn.
I look with rapture at the distant dawn,
And view the glories of the opening morn,
When justice holds his sceptre o’er the land,
And rescues freedom from a tyrant’s hand;
When patriot states in laurel crowns may rise,
And ancient kingdoms court them as allies;
Glory and valour shall be here display’d,
And virtue rear her long dejected head;
Her standard plant beneath these gladden’d skies,
Her fame extend, and arts and science rise;
While empire’s lofty spreading sails unfurl’d,
Roll swiftly on towards the western world.
Long she’s forsook her Asiatic throne,
And leaving Afric’s barb’rous burning zone,
On the broad ruins of Rome’s haughty power
Erected ramparts round fair Europe’s shore;
But in those blasted climes no more presides,
She, o’er the vast Atlantic surges rides,
Visits Columbia’s distant fertile plains,
Where liberty, a happy goddess, reigns.
No despot here shall rule with awful sway,
Nor orphan’s spoils become the minion’s prey;
No more the widow’d bleeding bosom mourns,
Nor injur’d cities weep their slaughter’d sons;
For then each tyrant, by the hand of fate,
And standing troops, the bane of every state,
Forever spurn’d, shall be remov’d as far
As bright Hesperus from the polar star;
Freedom and virtue shall un