Good Advice in Bad Verse (1787)

BY REVEREND TIMOTHY DWIGHT

BE then your counsels, as your subject, great, A world their sphere, and time’s long reign their date. Each party-view, each private good, disclaim, Each petty maxim, each colonial aim; Let all Columbia’s weal your views expand, A mighty system rule a mighty land;

Yourselves her genuine sons let Europe own, Not the small agents of a paltry town. Learn, cautious, what to alter, where to mend; See to what close projected measures tend. From pressing wants the mind averting still, Thinks good remotest from the present ill: From feuds anarchial to oppression’s throne, Misguided nations hence for safety run; And through the miseries of a thousand years, Their fatal folly mourn in bloody tears. Ten thousand follies thro’ Columbia spread; Ten thousand wars her darling realms invade. The private interest of each jealous state; Of rule the impatience, and of law the hate. But ah! from narrow springs these evils flow, A few base wretches mingle general woe; Still the same mind her manly race pervades; Still the same virtues haunt the hallow’d shades. But when the peals of war her centre shook, All private aims the anxious mind forsook. In danger’s iron-bond her race was one, Each separate good, each little view unknown. Now rule, unsystem’d, drives the mind astray; Now private interest points the downward way: Hence civil discord pours her muddy stream, And fools and villains float upon the brim; O’er all, the sad spectator casts his eye, And wonders where the gems and minerals lie. But ne’er of freedom, glory, bliss, despond: Uplift your eyes those little clouds beyond; See there returning suns, with gladdening ray, Roll on fair spring to chase this wint’ry day. ’Tis yours to bid those days of Eden shine: First, then, and last, the federal bands entwine: To this your every aim and effort bend: Let all your efforts here commence and end. O’er state concerns, let every state preside; Its private tax controul; its justice guide; Religion aid; the morals to secure;

And bid each private right thro’ time endure. Columbia’s interests public sway demand, Her commerce, impost, unlocated land; Her war, her peace, her military power; Treaties to seal with every distant shore; To bid contending states their discord cease; To send thro’ all the calumet of peace; Science to wing thro’ every noble flight; And lift desponding genius into light. Thro’ every state to spread each public law, Interest must animate, and force must awe. Persuasive dictates realms will ne’er obey; Sway, uncoercive, is the shade of sway. Be then your task to alter, aid, amend; The weak to strengthen, and the rigid bend; The prurient lop; what’s wanted to supply; And graft new scions from each friendly sky. Slow, by degrees, politic systems rise; Age still refines them, and experience tries. This, this alone consolidates, improves; Their sinews strengthens; their defects removes; Gives that consistence time alone can give; Habituates men by law and right to live; To gray-hair’d rules increasing reverence draws; And wins the slave to love e’en tyrant laws. But should Columbia, with distracted eyes, See o’er her ruins one proud monarch rise; Should vain partitions her fair realms divide, And rival empires float on faction’s tide; Lo fix’d opinions ’gainst the fabric rage! What wars, fierce passions with fierce passions wage! From Cancer’s glowing wilds, to Brunswick’s shore, Hark, holy the alarms of civil discord roar! "To arms," the trump of kindled warfare cries, And kindred blood smokes upward to the skies. As Persia, Greece, so Europe bids her flame, And smiles, with eye malignant, o’er her shame. Seize then, oh! seize Columbia’s golden hour; Perfect her federal system, public power;

For this stupendous realm, this chosen race, With all the improvements of all lands its base, The glorious structure build; its breadth extend; Its columns lift, its mighty arches bend! Or [on?] freedom, science, arts, its stories shine, Unshaken pillars of a frame divine; Far o’er the Atlantic wild its beams aspire, The world approves it, and the heavens admire; O’er clouds, and suns, and stars, its splendours rise, Till the bright top-stone vanish in the skies.

(J. Carey, New York, 1794), 46–48.