And strangers* did her land deride-
With wagging tongue, reviled;
Wild beast, they said, had multiplied
In that most barren wild;
Her houses were untenanted-
The foxt had manned her walls;
And "rank grass" waved around his head,
As in old Ossian's halls.
Her moral strength and physical,
Aye, both of them, were gone,
And every man seem'd phthisical,
Or like to tumble down;
Her talents all were buried deep,
Or in some napkin hid,
Or with the mighty dead, did sleep
Beneath the coffin lid.
But far! oh far beyond all these,
She had displeased her God;
Inter dolosos cineres,
She on volcano trod ;
She could not get of nights her rest;
At midnight bell for fire,
She hugged her infants to her breast,
Prepared for funeral pyre.
Virginia roused herself one day,
And took her picture down;
And as she gazed, was heard to say
Am I thus hideous grown?
*See Col. Benton's description of Virginia, done into verse, beginning thus:
"As Benton jogg'd along the road,
"Twas in the Old Dominion,
His thoughts were bent-on finding food
For preconceived opinion," &c.
"The fox peeped out of the window, and the rank grass waved around his head. Desolate is the dwelling of MoinaSilence is in the house of her fathers."- Ossian.
Man's strength is gone, his courage-zooks!
And liberty's fine motions, &c.-Benton.
And am I stupid-lazy-blind-
A monomaniac too!
Relaxed in body and in mind?
Oh no! it is not true.
There lies outstretched my glorious land,
With her capacious bay;
My rivers rush on every hand,
With sail and pennon gay;
My mountains, like a girdle blue,
Adorn her lovely waist,
"And lend enchantment to the view,"
As in "the distance" traced.
I'll hie me straight to Richmond town,
And call my liege men there;
And they shall write these libels down,
Or fill me with despair.
I have a friend, who'll make some stir,
And take my work in hand;
I'll send him forth my "Messenger"-
To "spy out all the land."*
That Messenger went gaily forth
Throughout her old domain,
And there found many men of worth
Would snatch their pens again;
And since their mother's blood was up-
To cast her odium by,
Would shed-of ink—their latest drop
T'inscribe her name on high.
The land which he went out to sift
No milk and honey floods—
It takes not two her grapes to lift†—
grapes festoon her woods.
* And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan.
And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff, * * * * * and they told him, and said, we came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it.
No want of food, for beast or man,
There met his eager gaze;
Find better bacon!-greens!-who can ?
Or finer fields of maize !*
Her Tuckahoes, 'tis true, are slim.
And of a bilious hue;
But then he found the Anakim
Beyond the mountains blue:
Some men he found in safety chains-
All crossed upon the breast-
They seem'd indeed to have no brains:
But these all lands infest.
The women look'd so passing fair,
How shall their charms be told?
By their Iachimost they were
Like brilliants set in gold.
Of such pure water was each maid ;
So sparkling unto view-
No wonder that it should be said
They never could turn blue.
No foxes here, peep'd windows through ;
But oft at early morn
They're seen to brush the glittering dew,
Pursued by hounds and horn:
Her "hounds are of the Spartan breed”—
"So sanded and so flew'd,"
All "dewlap'd" they, and all "crook-kneed"-
As Cadmus e'er halloo'd.
*In old Virginia, stint of food
Diseases have engender'd-
The mind is gone,-to want of blood
Good morals have surrender'd
Houses are fallen-fences down
And men are now much scarcer
Wild beasts in multitudes are known,
That every day get fiercer.
Flee gravel-grit-and heartless clay
Nor corn nor oats will grow there
To westward hie-away-away!
No heartless clay you'll know there.- Benton.
†The yellow Iachimo.-Shakspeare. (Cymbeline.)
In short, all zealots are run mad
T'abuse this pleasing sod;
Where people sleep as sound, egad,
As in the land of Nod :
What! colonize old coachman Dick!
My foster brother Nat!
My more than mother, when I'm sick!
Hinc canere incipiam."
Argument.
Virginia husbandry and that depicted by Virgil contrastedploughing—horses, and manner of driving-gear-mules-the ox-pastures-harrows, skimmers, &c.-crab grass-shepherdssheep-rogues-runaways-wolves-hounds-milk--milk-maids
fence rails-watlings-invocation-address to Arators-shallow ploughing-clover-gypsum-cowtail-Sir Humphrey Davyyear begins-clodhoppers-overseers-hiring day-bonds-distribution of labor-grubbing-effects of leaving stumps-old fenceshogs, &c., &c., &c.
I sing the tillage old Virginia knows,
Which cheats with hope the husbandman who sows ;
Not such as Maro sung in deathless strains,
To piping shepherds and Italian swains.
With crops immense"* no "barn here ever cracks ;"
The wheat comes always badly from the stacks,
The corn falls ever "most immensely" short
Of vague conjecture or of false report;
No well-fed bullocks drag the glittering plough,
But half starv'd horses, and the Lord knows how!
*Immensæ ruperunt horrea messes.-Virgil.
Their shoulders chafed by hames of naked wood,
Till downward streams regardlessly the blood;
Urged on incessantly by thundering whips,
Of shouting negroes, with their haws and geeps;
No well-fed bullocks-no, but stubborn mules,
Well matched in villainy with him who rules;
For as their sides resound, just heaven! with sticks,
They oft let fly the most tremendous kicks:
Tho' Pompey punch them, and tho' Cæsar curse,
It serves no purpose but to make them worse.
Some Frenchman* said "would you convince a fool?
As soon go kick in stable with your mule."
Sententious wit!-how forcible!-how true!
I daub the picture which at once he drew.
No well-fed bullocks-but the bare-boned ox,
That suffering martyr to inhuman knocks!
Condemned, tho' pining with the hollow horn,
To exist on fodder, but to eat no corn:
Repast too scanty!-in the furrow flat
The sufferer sinks-"the creature was too fat."
No smiling pastures spread inviting here,
But dry hot fields on every side appear;
A sultry scene, a dismal waste, alas!
Where man's great object is to kill the grass.
This, tho' attack'd with never ending blows
From harrows, skimmers, and from clattering hoes,
Will rise abhorrent on the farmer's view,
Like the fam'd monster which Alcides slew;
Crab grass deracinate, and turn your backs,
It starts like Hydra from repeated whacks.
No shepherds tune their reeds to idle rhyme,
For none have leisure for such waste of time;
In truth the sheep by no one here are watch'd,
Save rogues, who suffer if they can be catched:
Hound-wolf-or runaway he only deals
In closely dogging at their nimble heels.
Alas! poor flocks! Arcadia's pastoral ground,
Nor "thyme" nor "cytisus" can here be found;
†The common excuse of the buckskin for the death of an ox, occasioned by starvation.
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