March 16, 1776

While the death of General Richard Montgomery was the dominant story from Canada in early 1776, another death held a closer connection to Pennsylvania. This mournful poem, “On the Death of Capt. HENDRICK’s,” reflects on Captain William Hendricks, commander of a rifle company in the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment, who died in Canada on January 1, 1776. In his oration in memory of General Montgomery in February 1776, William Smith gave a nod to “the brave Captain Hendricks,” a man he had known “from his infancy.” Smith said that, after his commanding officer, Major General Benedict Arnold, was wounded, Hendricks “sustained the fire” of the British garrison until he was “shot in his breast” and “immediately expired.” Hendricks was from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the poem references the Susquehanna River, at the eastern edge of the county.

The Pennsylvania Ledger: Or the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey Weekly Advertiser
Printed by James Humphreys, Jr.

POET’s CORNER.
On the Death of Capt. HENDRICK’s.

MOURN mourn, my lyre, in each string,
While Hendrick’s dirge I sing.
From your oozy bed,
O! Susquehanna raise your head;

In the solemn pomp of woe
Bid your waters flow;
Let the shores around
Re-echo with this sound,

“The youthful Hendrick’s dead.”

Such were the words that struck my listning ear,
As on the Susquehanna’s bank’s I strayd;
I dropt a tender, sympathetic tear,
A small but grateful tribute to the dead.

High on a rock impending o’er the flood,
Her bosom all exposed to the wind,
The fair Florella mournful stood,
Her breast and cheeks besmear’d with blood,

Her locks, deshevell’d, flow’d behind;
Her eyes, tho’ sunk with grief, yet darted heavenly fire,
Across her alabaster neck there hung a lyre,
Which in her hand she took, and thus she sung,

While angels listn’d to the music of her tongue,

Air.

I.

Strong as the oak upon the plain,
He went away in manly pride;
But ah—! He fell among the slain,
He droop’d his head—and dy’d.

II.

On Abraham’s Plain my Hendricks lies,
All cover’d o’er with blood,
No friendly hand to close his eyes,
Or stop the crimson flood.

III.

No gentle voice to breathe the sounds 
Of peace into his dying ear;
No loving friend to bathe his wounds,
Or o’er his corse to drop a tear.

Grief choak’d her speech, her song a while she ceas’d,
But gushing tears her bosom quickly eas’d;
Then with a voice, might charm the wretch possest,
She thus pour’d forth the sorrows of her breast—

Air.

I.

I’ll seek out the cave of despair,
Attended by only the dove,
Whose little heart tortur’d with care.
Thinks of nought but her poor murder’d love.

II.

The same our cause is to mourn,
Her loss is the friend of her nest,
The friend of my bosom is torn,
Ah—! Torn from my poor bleeding breast.

III.

Like her I will taste no relief,
Her cooings shall answer each grown,
And sympathy heighten my grief
By making her sorrows my own.

She here stopt short—swift as the timorous fawn
Flees from the hounds by whon he is pursued,
She left the rock, and running oer the lawn,
Sought the dark covert of a distant wood.