The Republican Genius of Europe
Emperors and kings! in vain you strive
Your torments to conceal—
The age is come that shakes your thrones,
Tramples in dust despotic crowns,
And bids the sceptre fail.
In western worlds the flame began:
From thence to France it flew—
Through Europe, now, it takes its way,
Beams an insufferable day,
And lays all tyrants low.
Genius of France! pursue the chace
Till Reason’s laws restore
Man to be Man, in every clime;—
That Being, active, great, sublime
Debas’d in dust no more.
In dreadful pomp he takes his way
O’er ruin’d crowns, demolish’d thrones—
Pale tyrants shrink before his blaze—
Round him terrific lightnings play—
With eyes of fire, he looks them through,
Crushes the vile despotic crew,
And Pride in ruin lays.
This poem is in the public domain.
Published in the Jersey Chronicle, May 23, 1795, from which the text is taken. It forms the basis of the poem "On the Royal Coalition Against Republican Liberty."
Philip Freneau
Born in New York City and raised in Monmouth Country, New Jersey, Philip Morin Freneau graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1771; at the college commencement, his friend Hugh Henry Breckenridge read The Rising Glory of America, a poem on which the two had collaborated. While working for a short time as a schoolteacher in Long Island, Freneau published anti-British satirical verses. He spent two years as secretary to a planter on St. Croix.