poets: There spread the wild rose, there the woodbine twin'd; There stood green fern, there o'er the grassy ground Sweet camomile and ale-hoof spread around; And centaury red, and yellow cinquefoil grew, And scarlet campion and cyanus blue; And tufted thyme, and marjoram's purple bloom, And ruddy strawberries yielding rich perfume. There is a wide range of literary and geographical reference as well. Two poems respond to the work of Mark Akenside and there is a sonnet on Shenstone’s elegies. The “Mexican Prophecy” is set at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and in his “Oriental Eclogues” Scott follows the example of William Collins by writing three set in Arabia, India and China. The last of these deals with the historical poet Li Po. He protested in his Letter to the Critical Reviewers that not all his poems were included in the Poetical Works. Twelve unpublished poems are among his papers at the Friends' Library or in other letters to friends. They include four long odes and four sonnets, numbered V-VIII, which he may have planned to include in a cooperative volume with Joseph Cockfield. The poem by which Scott is most remembered now is “The Drum” (Ode 13), an anti-war poem beginning “I hate that drum’s discordant sound” which was widely reprinted after its publication. In England it was set as a vocal piece by Benjamin Frankel as part of his “8 Songs” (Op. 32, 1959), and later by Christopher Dowie. In the 21st century it has been set to music by the Quaker composer Ned Rorem as the opening piece in his song cycle "Aftermath" (2001), an immediate pacifist reaction to the vengeful spirit that followed the attacks of 9/11. There was also a later US setting for choir and snare drum by William F. Funk in 2004, and in Canada it was set by Robert Rival as the sixth in his cycle “Red Moon and other songs of war” (2007). References "John Scott" in the Dictionary of National Biography on Wikisource Alexander Chalmers, biographical notice in Works of the English Poets (1810), 17:445-52 SourcesJohn Scott of Amwell (1956) Lawrence D. StewartScott of Amwell, Dr. Johnson's Quaker Critic'' (2001) David Perman Scott's letters at the Friends' Library, London (Dimsdale MSS) External links John Scott at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA) 18th-century English poets People from Great Amwell English Quakers 1731 births 1783 deaths English