These poor little creatures were all in a flame, To the lands of America urging their claim, Still biting, or stinging, or spreading their sails; (For Vulcan had formed them with stings in their tails).
So poor and so lean, you might count all their ribs,[B] Yet were so enraptured with crackers and squibs, That Vulcan with laughter almost split asunder, "Because they imagined their crackers were thunder."
[B] Their national debt being now above _l._ 200,000,000 sterling.--_Freneau's note._
Due westward from these, with a channel between, A servant to slaves, Hibernia was seen, Once crowded with monarchs, and high in renown, But all she retained was the Harp and the Crown!
Insulted forever by nobles and priests,[144] And managed by bullies, and governed by beasts, She looked!--to describe her I hardly know how-- Such an image of death in the scowl on her brow.
For scaffolds and halters were full in her view, And the fiends of perdition their cutlasses drew: And axes and gibbets around her were placed, And the demons of murder her honours defaced. With the blood of the worthy her mantle was stained, And hardly a trace of her beauty remained.
Her genius, a female, reclined in the shade, And, sick of oppression,[145] so mournfully played, That Jove was uneasy to hear her complain, And ordered his blacksmith to loosen her chain:
Then tipt her a wink, saying, "Now is your time, "(To rebel is the sin, to revolt is no crime) "When your fetters are off, if you dare not be free "Be a slave and be damned,[146] but complain not to me."
But finding her timid, he cried in a rage-- "Though the doors are flung open, she stays in the cage! "Subservient to Britain then let her remain, "And her freedom shall be, but the choice[147] of her chain,"
At length, to discourage all stupid pretensions, Jove looked at the globe, and approved its dimensions, And cried in a transport--"Why what have we here! "Friend Vulcan, it is a most beautiful sphere!
"Now while I am busy in taking apart "This globe that is formed with such exquisite art, "Go, Hermes, to Libra, (you're one of her gallants) "And ask, in my name, for the loan of her balance."
Away posted Hermes, as swift as the gales, And as swiftly returned with the ponderous scales, And hung them aloft to a beam in the air, So equally poised, they had turned with a hair.