To the americans of the united states

MEN of this passing age!—whose noble deedsHonour will bear above the scum of Time:Ere this eventful century expire,Once more we greet you with our humble rhyme;Pleased, if we meet your smiles, but—if denied,Yet, with YOUR sentence, we are satisfied.

Catching our subjects from the varying sceneOf human things; a mingled work we draw,Chequered with fancies odd, and figures strange,Such, as no courtly poet ever saw;Who writ, beneath some GREAT MAN’S ceiling placed;Travelled no lands, nor roamed the watery waste.

To seize some features from the faithless past;Be this our care—before the century close:The colours strong!—for, if we deem aright,The coming age will be an age of prose:When sordid cares will break the muses’ dream,And COMMON SENSE be ranked in seat supreme,

Go, now, dear book, once more expand your wings:Still to the cause of Man severely true:Untaught to flatter pride, or fawn on kings;—Trojan, or Tyrian,—give them both their due.—When they are right, the cause of both we plead,And both will please us well.—if both will read.

1797

l. 19. dear book: Although composed in 1797, this poem introduced Volume II of Freneau’s collected poems of 1809.

l. 22. Tyrian: an inhabitant of Tyre, and so a Phoenician. The line is a paraphrase of Virgil: “Tros, Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur”.