The Group, by Mercy Otis Warren

From Act II, Scene iii

Meagre: Let not thy soft timidity of heart
Urge thee to terms, until the last stake is thrown.
It is not my temper ever to forgive,
When once resentment's kindled to my breast.
I hated Brutus for his noble stand
Against the oppressors of his injured country.
I hate the leaders of these restless factions,
For all their generous efforts to be free.
I curse the senate which defeats our bribes,
Who Halzerod impeached for the same crime.
I hate the people, who, no longer gulled,
See through the schemes of our aspiring clan,
And from the rancor of my venomed mind,
I look askance on all the human race,
And if they're not to be appalled by fear,
I wish the earth might drink that vital stream
That warms the heart, and feeds the manly glow,
The love inherent, planted in the breast,
To equal liberty, conferred on man,
By him who formed the peasant and the King!
Could we erase these notions from their minds,
Then (paramount to these ideal whims,
Utopian dreams, of patriotic virtue,
Which long has danced in their distempered brains).
We'd smoothly glide on midst a race of slaves,
Nor heave one sigh though all the human race
Were plunged in darkness, slavery and vice.
If we could keep our foothold in the stirrup,
And, like the noble Claudia of old,
Ride over the people, if they don't give way;
Or with their fates were all involved in one;
For I've a Brother, as the Roman dame
Who would strike off the rebel neck at once.