"The worms they crept in"

[George Thompson]

The line quoted below is the first line of a poem I remember from my very youthful days, recited by me and my classmates with the thought that we were saying something very daring.  I don't recall my age, but it would have been in probably 3rd or 4th grade, probably not when we were more mature.

Faction, lifting up his snaky head,* contemns, in that Commonwealth, it is apprehended, all reason, and defies all law.
        *"The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out."
        American Citizen, January 26, 1809, p. 2, col. 2  The footnote is as in the original.
        The American Citizen was a NYC newspaper, virulently political.


George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.