What are some characteristics of Revolutionary poetry?

Oddly enough,
one of the more prominent Revolutionary poets was Phyllis Wheatley(1753-1784), an emancipated
African slave whose owners taught her to read and write. She captured both the spirit of the
Revolution and the sins of America in her poetry that imitates the popular style of poetry of
her time:  She uses a Latinate vocabulary, inversions, and elevated . For instance, in this
stanza from her poem to the earl of Dartmouth, a new appointee as secretary of state in charge
of the American Colonies, Wheatley hopes that Dartmouth will be open to the colonists'
grievances:

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my
song,

Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,

Whence
flow these wishes for the common good,

By feeling hearts alone best
understood,

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was
snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:

...Such, such my case.  And can I
then but pray

Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

Much of the Revolutionary poetry usedto amplify the cause and
spirit of the Revolution.  However, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who did not live during the
Revolutionary period, wrote about the Revolution in a different tone as he sought to define the
intention and significance of the Founding Fathers' actions.  In such poems as "A Nation's
Strength," he asks and answers the question "What  makes a nation's pillars high/And
its foundations strong?"

It is not gold. Its kingdoms
grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking
sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Not gold but only men can make
A
people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and
suffer long.

In his poem "Concord Hymn,"
Emerson extols the bravery of the soldiers of the Revolution,

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children
free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise
to them and thee."

Some of the poetry written about
the Revolution created an American mythology.  Critics feel that Walt Whitman did more to
interpret the meaning of the Revolution than any poet as he projected the Revolutionary spirit
into "a vision of citizenship" in his "I Hear America Singing":

Washington spoke; Friends of America look over the

  Altantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron
chain
Descends link by link from Albion's cliffs across the sea to
bind
Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;
Heads
deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis'd,
Feet bleeding on the sultry
sands, and the furrows of the whip
Descend to generations that in future times
forget.