Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons, Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, Onward beneath the sun following its course, So thee O ship of France!

Finish’d the days, the clouds dispel’d, The travail o’er, the long-sought extrication, When lo! reborn, high o’er the European world, (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours Columbia,) Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star, In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, Shall beam immortal.

In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them, He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard, The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides⁠—how soon this tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color’d, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)⁠—see you! the bright hides,