America

“America” is a poem about the importance of freedom and the nature of American identity as a new and industrious nation deserving of respect. Throughout the poem, the speaker both depicts British injustices against its colony and argues for the importance of reconciliation in order to avoid greater rebellion.

The speaker celebrates the achievement of the British colonists who wrestled this New England colony from the forbidding wilderness they first encountered more than a century earlier. They gained that achievement by the relentless displacement and disenfranchisement of “the savage monsters” (Line 3) they met when they landed. It was the freedom of the Americas that empowered the earliest settlers: “Thy Power, O Liberty, makes strong the weak” (Line 5). In invoking the power of "Liberty” and crediting it as the new nation’s source of strength, the speaker immediately draws a direct association between freedom and the essence of the American experiment.

Lines 8-29 deliver the heart of the poet’s argument, using the metaphorical representation of “Britannia” (England) as an unjust mother who is abusing her son (America). The speaker portrays harsh mother England as laying oppressive taxes on her colonies, an action motivated by how she “Fear[ed] his Strength” (Line 10), as though uneasy at the idea that America could become a rival or threat to her own standing. The son/colonies, despite loving their mother, cannot help but complain. Their cries are initially ignored by their mother England— “Britannia turned a senseless ear” (Line 17)—until she is forced to ask, “What ails the rebel” (Line 23), with “rebel” alluding to the growing revolutionary fervor in the colonies.

In response, the oppressed son/colonies insist upon their rights and decry their treatment as unjust: “Indeed said he you have no cause to Chide / You see each day my fluent tears my food / Without regard, what no more English blood?” (Lines 24-26). The son/colonists cannot abide being treated “Without regard” and emphasize the shared kinship between the mother country and the colonies, as they still regard themselves as being of “English blood” (Line 26). The son/colonies then “weeps afresh to feel this Iron chain” (Line 31), with the imagery of the “Iron chain” of oppression contrasting with the “Liberty” that was praised in Line 5.

The poem closes with a plea for reconciliation. The speaker presents resolving the colonies’ grievances as beneficial not just for America but for England itself. The speaker urges, “Turn, O Britannia claim thy child again” (Line 32), reinforcing the symbolic importance of national motherhood and stressing once more the sense of kinship that the speaker suggests should exist between America and England. The speaker ends the poem by assuring England that a powerful America will, in place of being a threat or rival, bolster England’s own standing by becoming ever more industrious: “O Britain See / By this New England will increase like thee” (Lines 41-42). The speaker thus advocates for reconciliation before it is too late, arguing that America and Britain should remain united and prosper together.