John Trumbull Poems >>
M'Fingal - Canto III

Now warm with ministerial ire,
Fierce sallied forth our loyal ‘Squire,
And on his striding steps attends
His desperate clan of Tory friends.
When sudden met his wrathful eye
A pole ascending through the sky,
Which numerous throngs of whiggish race
Were raising in the market-place.
Not higher school-boy’s kites aspire,
Or royal mast, or country spire;
Like spears at Brobdignagian tilting,
Or Satan’s walking-staff in Milton.
And on its top, the flag unfurl’d
Waved triumph o’er the gazing world,
Inscribed with inconsistent types
Of Liberty and thirteen stripes.
Beneath, the crowd without delay
The dedication-rites essay,
And gladly pay, in antient fashion,
The ceremonies of libation;
While briskly to each patriot lip
Walks eager round the inspiring flip:
Delicious draught! whose powers inherit
The quintessence of public spirit;
Which whoso tastes, perceives his mind
To nobler politics refined;
Or roused to martial controversy,
As from transforming cups of Circe;
Or warm’d with Homer’s nectar’d liquor,
That fill’d the veins of gods with ichor.
At hand for new supplies in store,
The tavern opes its friendly door,
Whence to and fro the waiters run,
Like bucket-men at fires in town.
Then with three shouts that tore the sky,
‘Tis consecrate to Liberty.
To guard it from th’ attacks of Tories,
A grand Committee cull’d of four is;
Who foremost on the patriot spot,
Had brought the flip, and paid the shot.

By this, M’Fingal with his train
Advanced upon th’ adjacent plain,
And full with loyalty possest,
Pour’d forth the zeal, that fired his breast.

“What mad-brain’d rebel gave commission,
To raise this May-pole of sedition?
Like Babel, rear’d by bawling throngs,
With like confusion too of tongues,
To point at heaven and summon down
The thunders of the British crown?
Say, will this paltry Pole secure
Your forfeit heads from Gage’s power?
Attack’d by heroes brave and crafty,
Is this to stand your ark of safety;
Or driven by Scottish laird and laddie,
Think ye to rest beneath its shadow?
When bombs, like fiery serpents, fly,
And balls rush hissing through the sky,
Will this vile Pole, devote to freedom,
Save like the Jewish pole in Edom;
Or like the brazen snake of Moses,
Cure your crackt skulls and batter’d noses?

“Ye dupes to every factious rogue
And tavern-prating demagogue,
Whose tongue but rings, with sound more full,
On th’ empty drumhead of his scull;
Behold you not what noisy fools
Use you, worse simpletons, for tools?
For Liberty, in your own by-sense,
Is but for crimes a patent license,
To break of law th’ Egyptian yoke,
And throw the world in common stock;
Reduce all grievances and ills
To Magna Charta of your wills;
Establish cheats and frauds and nonsense,
Framed to the model of your conscience;
Cry justice down, as out of fashion,
And fix its scale of depreciation;
Defy all creditors to trouble ye,
And keep new years of Jewish jubilee;
Drive judges out, like Aaron’s calves,
By jurisdiction of white staves,
And make the bar and bench and steeple
Submit t’ our Sovereign Lord, The People;
By plunder rise to power and glory,
And brand all property, as Tory;
Expose all wares to lawful seizures
By mobbers or monopolizers;
Break heads and windows and the peace,
For your own interest and increase;
Dispute and pray and fight and groan
For public good, and mean your own;
Prevent the law by fierce attacks
From quitting scores upon your backs;
Lay your old dread, the gallows, low,
And seize the stocks, your ancient foe,
And turn them to convenient engines
To wreak your patriotic vengeance;
While all, your rights who understand,
Confess them in their owner’s hand;
And when by clamours and confusions,
Your freedom’s grown a public nuisance,
Cry “Liberty,” with powerful yearning,
As he does “Fire!” whose house is burning;
Though he already has much more
Than he can find occasion for.
While every clown, that tills the plains,
Though bankrupt in estate and brains,
By this new light transform’d to traitor,
Forsakes his plough to turn dictator,
Starts an haranguing chief of Whigs,
And drags you by the ears, like pigs.
All bluster, arm’d with factious licence,
New-born at once to politicians.
Each leather-apron’d dunce, grown wise,
Presents his forward face t’ advise,
And tatter’d legislators meet,
From every workshop through the street.
His goose the tailor finds new use in,
To patch and turn the Constitution;
The blacksmith comes with sledge and grate
To iron-bind the wheels of state;
The quack forbears his patients’ souse,
To purge the Council and the House;
The tinker quits his moulds and doxies,
To cast assembly-men and proxies.
From dunghills deep of blackest hue,
Your dirt-bred patriots spring to view,
To wealth and power and honors rise,
Like new-wing’d maggots changed to flies,
And fluttering round in high parade,
Strut in the robe, or gay cockade.
See Arnold quits, for ways more certain,
His bankrupt-perj’ries for his fortune,
Brews rum no longer in his store,
Jockey and skipper now no more,
Forsakes his warehouses and docks,
And writs of slander for the pox;
And cleansed by patriotism from shame,
Grows General of the foremost name.
For in this ferment of the stream
The dregs have work’d up to the brim,
And by the rule of topsy-turvies,
The scum stands foaming on the surface.
You’ve caused your pyramid t’ ascend,
And set it on the little end.
Like Hudibras, your empire’s made,
Whose crupper had o’ertopp’d his head.
You’ve push’d and turn’d the whole world up-
Side down, and got yourselves at top,
While all the great ones of your state
Are crush’d beneath the popular weight;
Nor can you boast, this present hour,
The shadow of the form of power.
For what’s your Congress or its end?
A power, t’ advise and recommend;
To call forth troops, adjust your quotas—
And yet no soul is bound to notice;
To pawn your faith to th’ utmost limit,
But cannot bind you to redeem it;
And when in want no more in them lies,
Than begging from your State-Assemblies;
Can utter oracles of dread,
Like friar Bacon’s brazen head,
But when a faction dares dispute ’em,
Has ne’er an arm to execute ’em:
As tho’ you chose supreme dictators,
And put them under conservators.
You’ve but pursued the self-same way
With Shakespeare’s Trinc’lo in the play;
“You shall be Viceroys here, ’tis true,
“But we’ll be Viceroys over you.”
What wild confusion hence must ensue?
Tho’ common danger yet cements you:
So some wreck’d vessel, all in shatters,
Is held up by surrounding waters,
But stranded, when the pressure ceases,
Falls by its rottenness to pieces.
And fall it must! if wars were ended,
You’ll ne’er have sense enough to mend it:
But creeping on, by low intrigues,
Like vermin of a thousand legs,
‘Twill find as short a life assign’d,
As all things else of reptile kind.
Your Commonwealth’s a common harlot,
The property of every varlet;
Which now in taste, and full employ,
All sorts admire, as all enjoy:
But soon a batter’d strumpet grown,
You’ll curse and drum her out of town.
Such is the government you chose;
For this you bade the world be foes;
For this, so mark’d for dissolution,
You scorn the British Constitution,
That constitution form’d by sages,
The wonder of all modern ages;
Which owns no failure in reality,
Except corruption and venality;
And merely proves the adage just,
That best things spoil’d corrupt to worst:
So man supreme in earthly station,
And mighty lord of this creation,
When once his corse is dead as herring,
Becomes the most offensive carrion,
And sooner breeds the plague, ’tis found,
Than all beasts rotting on the ground.
Yet with republics to dismay us,
You’ve call’d up Anarchy from chaos,
With all the followers of her school,
Uproar and Rage and wild Misrule:
For whom this rout of Whigs distracted,
And ravings dire of every crack’d head;
These new-cast legislative engines
Of County-meetings and Conventions;
Committees vile of correspondence,
And mobs, whose tricks have almost undone ‘s:
While reason fails to check your course,
And Loyalty’s kick’d out of doors,
And Folly, like inviting landlord,
Hoists on your poles her royal standard;
While the king’s friends, in doleful dumps,
Have worn their courage to the stumps,
And leaving George in sad disaster,
Most sinfully deny their master.
What furies raged when you, in sea,
In shape of Indians, drown’d the tea;
When your gay sparks, fatigued to watch it,
Assumed the moggison and hatchet,
With wampum’d blankets hid their laces,
And like their sweethearts, primed their faces:
While not a red-coat dared oppose,
And scarce a Tory show’d his nose;
While Hutchinson, for sure retreat,
Manoeuvred to his country seat,
And thence affrighted, in the suds,
Stole off bareheaded through the woods.

“Have you not roused your mobs to join,
And make Mandamus-men resign,
Call’d forth each dufill-drest curmudgeon,
With dirty trowsers and white bludgeon,
Forced all our Councils through the land,
To yield their necks at your command;
While paleness marks their late disgraces,
Through all their rueful length of faces?

“Have you not caused as woeful work
In our good city of New-York,
When all the rabble, well cockaded,
In triumph through the streets paraded,
And mobb’d the Tories, scared their spouses,
And ransack’d all the custom-houses;
Made such a tumult, bluster, jarring,
That mid the clash of tempests warring,
Smith’s weather-cock, in veers forlorn,
Could hardly tell which way to turn?
Burn’d effigies of higher powers,
Contrived in planetary hours;
As witches with clay-images
Destroy or torture whom they please:
Till fired with rage, th’ ungrateful club
Spared not your best friend, Beelzebub,
O’erlook’d his favors, and forgot
The reverence due his cloven foot,
And in the selfsame furnace frying,
Stew’d him, and North and Bute and Tryon?
Did you not, in as vile and shallow way,
Fright our poor Philadelphian, Galloway,
Your Congress, when the loyal ribald
Belied, berated and bescribbled?
What ropes and halters did you send,
Terrific emblems of his end,
Till, least he’d hang in more than effigy,
Fled in a fog the trembling refugee?
Now rising in progression fatal,
Have you not ventured to give battle?
When Treason chaced our heroes troubled,
With rusty gun, and leathern doublet;
Turn’d all stone-walls and groves and bushes,
To batteries arm’d with blunderbusses;
And with deep wounds, that fate portend,
Gaul’d many a Briton’s latter end;
Drove them to Boston, as in jail,
Confined without mainprize or bail.
Were not these deeds enough betimes,
To heap the measure of your crimes:
But in this loyal town and dwelling,
You raise these ensigns of rebellion?
‘Tis done! fair Mercy shuts her door;
And Vengeance now shall sleep no more.
Rise then, my friends, in terror rise,
And sweep this scandal from the skies.
You’ll see their Dagon, though well jointed,
Will shrink before the Lord’s anointed;
And like old Jericho’s proud wall,
Before our ram’s horns prostrate fall.”

This said, our ‘Squire, yet undismay’d,
Call’d forth the Constable to aid,
And bade him read, in nearer station,
The Riot-act and Proclamation.
He swift, advancing to the ring,
Began, “Our Sovereign Lord, the King”—
When thousand clam’rous tongues he hears,
And clubs and stones assail his ears.
To fly was vain; to fight was idle;
By foes encompass’d in the middle,
His hope, in stratagems, he found,
And fell right craftily to ground;
Then crept to seek an hiding place,
‘Twas all he could, beneath a brace;
Where soon the conq’ring crew espied him,
And where he lurk’d, they caught and tied him.

At once with resolution fatal,
Both Whigs and Tories rush’d to battle.
Instead of weapons, either band
Seized on such arms as came to hand.
And as famed Ovid paints th’ adventures
Of wrangling Lapith

(John Trumbull)

More Poetry from John Trumbull:

• M'Fingal - Canto I (John Trumbull Poems)
• To Ladies Of A Certain Age (John Trumbull Poems)
• The Owl And The Sparrow (John Trumbull Poems)
• To A Young Lady (John Trumbull Poems)
• The Country Clown (John Trumbull Poems)
• Beneath A Mountain's Brow (John Trumbull Poems)

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