“For here the exile met from every clime, And spoke in friendship every distant tongue:”
- Source
- Gertrude of Wyoming
- Date
- 1809
- Local voice
- Narrator voice · Narrator
Meaning of “For here the exile met from every clime,…”
The narrator imagines Wyoming as a place where displaced people from different European backgrounds can live together peacefully across languages.
Where does it come from?
Gertrude of Wyoming, Part I, stanza IV, represented in The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, Project Gutenberg #59788, around printed page 46. Campbell's ‘exile ... from every clime’ lines idealize the pre-conflict Wyoming settlement before the poem turns toward violence associated with the 1778 Wyoming conflict. They remain Romantic historical-poetic framing rather than a factual demographic account of colonial Pennsylvania.
Why the local voice matters
Gertrude of Wyoming, Part I. The narrator idealizes Wyoming as a peaceful multilingual refuge before the poem’s later violence; the passage is literary historical framing rather than a demographic record.