Soon as we saw our native shore

Verse 1
Soon as we saw our native shore,
We deem’d our griefs and sufferings o’re,
And fondly hoped to find
A friend in every British breast,
Those patrons of the poor distrest,
Those lovers of mankind.

Verse 2
But who the fugitives receiv’d,
Who our necessities reliev’d,
Or reach’d us out their hand?
To them we for protection fled;
They scarce permitted us to tread
Th’ inhospitable land.

Verse 3
Here, for our Country’s sake undone,
We pined, unpitied, and unknown,
Without a comforter:
None for our souls or bodies cared,
Our story with compassion heard,
Or dropt a generous tear.

Verse 4
The people swimming with the tide,
And strenuous on the rebels side,
Rejoic’d in their success
(Rais’d from the dust to sovereign sway;)
And prais’d the men who cast away
Our useless colonies.

Verse 5
What wonder then, if the true Seed
Of Those that doom’d their King to bleed,
In Satan’s cause employ’d,
Sworn enemies to the regal State,
Unshaken Royalists shoud hate
And wish us all destroy’d.

Verse 6
Triumph’d the Great in deeper guilt,
In loyal blood of thousands spilt,
In England’s glory gone;
They trampled us with proud disdain,
Us who so long oppos’d the men
They set in George’s throne.

Verse 7
Of ill-got wealth and power possest,
Coud pity move a patriot’s breast,
Or make a Sh[elburne] feel?
(Statesmen who mock the quenchless fire,
Till Satan pays his slaves their hire,
And gives them thrones in hell.)

Verse 8
Woud men like these the presence bear
Of us, who coud their arts declare
Their deeds of darkness trace,
And tell to all succeeding times
Their treasons, cruelties, and crimes,
And monstrous wickedness!

Verse 9
Again they practis’d all their wiles
T’ appropriate their Country’s spoils
Her justice to defeat,
To make her falsify her word,
And leave the Loyalists abhor’d
To perish at her feet.

Verse 10
And if the Patriots still prevail,
If public faith and justice fail,
A full reward we have
For all our sufferings in their Cause,
While Britain doth our every loss
Compensate — with a grave!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “The Testimony of the American Loyalists 1783. Part IV.” This hymn appears in the 1783 manuscript “MS American Loyalists 1783.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/559, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 2). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 1 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1988), pages 123-29.
Publishing: Public Domain