A world of eighteenth-century thought, peopled with personifications, lay buried in the ten thousand lines of President Dwight's youthful poem. Perhaps in the year 1800, after Jefferson's triumph, Dwight would have been less eager that his hero should save the Rights of Man; by that time the phrase had acquired a flavor of French infidelity which made it unpalatable to good taste. Yet the same Jeffersonian spirit ran through Dwight's famous national song, which was also written in the Revolutionary War:—
- "Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
- The queen of the world and child of the skies!
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
- Thy heroes the rights of mankind shall defend,
- And triumph pursue them, and glory attend.
- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
- While the ensigns of union in triumph unfurled
- Hush the tumult of war and give peace to the world."
"Peace to the world" was the essence of Jeffersonian principles, worth singing in something better than jingling metre and indifferent rhyme; but President Dwight's friends in 1800 no longer sang this song. More and more conservative as he grew older, he published in 1797 an orthodox "Triumph of Infidelity," introduced by a dedication to Voltaire. His rebuke to mild theology was almost as severe as that to French deism:—
- "There smiled the smooth divine, unused to wound
- The sinner's heart with Hell's alarming sound."
