To The Memory Of The Brave Americans[104]

Under General Greene, in South Carolina, who fell in the action of September 8, 1781

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died; Their limbs with dust are covered o'er-- Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck of ruin, they Can yet be thought to claim a tear, O smite your gentle breast, and say The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain, If goodness rules thy generous breast, Sigh for the wasted rural reign; Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble graves adorn; You too may fall, and ask a tear; 'Tis not the beauty of the morn That proves the evening shall be clear.--

They saw their injured country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rushed to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear--but left the shield.

Led by thy conquering genius, Greene, The Britons they compelled to fly; None distant viewed the fatal plain, None grieved, in such a cause to die--

But, like the Parthian, famed of old. Who, flying, still their arrows threw, These routed Britons, full as bold, Retreated, and retreating slew.

Now rest in peace, our patriot band; Though far from nature's limits thrown, We trust they find a happier land, A brighter sunshine of their own.

First published in the Freeman's Journal, November 21, 1781. The patriot army under Greene spent the summer of 1781 in the High Hills of Santee, in South Carolina. "On the 22d of August, Greene broke up his camp very quietly and started out on the last of his sagacious campaigns.... By vigilant scouting parties, he so completely cut off the enemy's means of information that Stuart remained ignorant of his approach until he was close at hand. The British commander then fell back on Eutaw Springs, about fifty miles from Charleston, where he waited in a strong position. The battle of Eutaw Springs may be resolved into two brief actions between sunrise and noon of the 8th of September, 1781. In the first action the British line was broken and driven from the field. In the second, Stuart succeeded in forming a new line, supported by a brick house and palisaded garden, and from this position Greene was unable to drive him. It has therefore been set down as a British victory. If so, it was a victory followed the next evening by the hasty retreat of the victors, who were hotly pursued by Marion and Lee."--Fiske.

"In the two engagements the Americans lost in killed, wounded, and missing, five hundred and fifty-four men."--Bancroft.

Scott borrowed this line in the introduction to the third canto of Marmion, in the apostrophe to the Duke of Brunswick, which reads thus:

"Lamented Chief!--not thine the power To save in that presumptuous hour, When Prussia hurried to the field And snatched the spear but left the shield."

After the first engagement the British fled in confusion. Greene, in his eagerness, pursued them too closely, and sheltered by the brick house, they inflicted upon the advancing Americans the greater part of the loss of life incurred during the battle.