Providence Morning Star

THE ORIGIN OF "No Pent-UP Utica."

Everybody has heard these lines:
"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours."

But very few people know the author or in what poem they occur. The Portsmouth (N. H.) Journal says they were written by one Jonathan Mitchell Sewell, a Portsmouth poet, as an epilogue to Addison's play of "Cato," on the occasion of its performance by an amateur company in that place, in 1774. The whole production was one of decided power. The spirit of the Revolution entered into every expression. We give a few lines:

And what now gleams
The evening rays at home,
Once blaz'd in full-orbed majesty at Rome,
Did Rome's brave Senate nobly strive t' oppose
The mighty torrent of domestic foes?
And boldly arm the virtuous few, and dare
The desperate perils of unequal war?
Our Senate, too, the same bold deed has done,
And for a Cato, arm'd a Washington!
Rise, then, my countrymen! for fight prepare
Gird on swords and fearless rush to war!
For your grieved country nobly dare to die,
And empty all your veins for liberty.
No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours!

Utica, a town older than and in the vicinity of ancient Carthage, was the place where Cato died. This fact, with the above extracts, will sufficiently explain one of the most expressive quotations in our language -which has been frequently made by the most distinguished orators, Webster among them, without an acknowledgment of the source from whence it came.