Arriving from Britain with cargo so nice
Once more have I touched at these regions of rice!
Dear Ashley, with pleasure thy stream I review:
But how changed are these plains that we wished to subdue.
If through the wild woods he extended his reign,
And death and the hangman were both in his train,
Cornwallis no longer disturbs your repose,
His lordship is dead or at least in a doze.
By Sullivan's island how quiet we pass;
Fort Johnson no longer salutes us, alas!—
The season has been you did nothing but mourn,
But now you will laugh at a Briton's return!
Instead of gay soldiers that walked the parade,
Here is nothing but draymen and people in trade;
Instead of our navy that thundered around,
Here is nothing but ships without guns to be found.
Instead of Lord Rawdon and Nesbit Balfour,
Whose names and whose notions you cannot endure,
But whom in their glory you could not forget
When puffed by the froth of the Royal Gazette:
Instead of those tyrants, who homewards have flown,
This country is ruled by a race of its own,
Whom once we could laugh at — but now we must say
Seem rising to be in a handsomer way.
To us and our island eternally foes,
How tedious you are in forgetting your woes,
Your plundered plantations you still will remember,
Although we have left you — three years last December!