Come, gentle Peace, with smiling ray,
Beam on our land a cloudless day;
Beneath thy influence serene,
The olive wears immortal green.
Come, gentle Peace, resume thy reign,
With all thy virtues in thy train;
And then Columbia's soil shall grow,
As verdant Paradise below.
5/4/2014 - 07:18
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Ten-year-old Esther Talbot took up her pen, dipped it in ink, and with near perfect penmanship wrote the word "Peace" atop expensive paper.
Most likely, this was how the girl from a prominent Stoughton family began her short poem in 1814, almost two years after the start of the War of 1812 and just months before Francis Scott Key penned "The Star Spangled Banner," according to Roger Hall. The local composer put her words to music after finding the poem more than two decades ago while searching the archives of the Stoughton Historical Society.
"She wasn't just talking about lilies in the field," Hall said.
She was writing an anti-war poem.
-- Esther Talbot, 1814 (War of 1812)