{"id":292,"date":"2021-02-16T19:09:42","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T19:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-empire-amliterature\/?post_type=chapter&p=292"},"modified":"2021-07-12T13:54:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:54:19","slug":"philip-freneau","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-empire-amliterature\/chapter\/philip-freneau\/","title":{"raw":"Philip Freneau, Poems","rendered":"Philip Freneau, Poems"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction: Philip Freneau (1752\u20131832)<\/h2>\r\n\"Philip\r\n\r\nBorn in New York into a well-to-do family, Philip Freneau was tutored at home before entering the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The two important focuses of his future work\u2014that is, politics and literature\u2014 might be discerned in two important friendships he made there, with James Madison, a future president, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748\u20131816), a future novelist. He and Brackenridge collaborated on a commencement poem entitled The Rising Glory of America. A humanist and deistic optimist, Freneau thus early on in his writing expressed hope for America as a separate, democratic\u2014and utopian\u2014nation.\r\n\r\nAfter graduating, Freneau taught briefly then traveled in 1776 to the West Indies to work as secretary on a plantation. His poem \u201cThe Beauties of Santa Cruz\u201d reveals both the beauties of nature there and the misery of the impoverished and enslaved; indeed, it curses the ship that brought slaves to that island. After leaving the West Indies in 1778, Freneau took to the seas himself, serving as a seaman on a blockade runner. While on an American ship, he was captured and taken prisoner by the British. His poem \u201cThe British Prison Ship\u201d (1781) describes his brutal treatment by the British while their prisoner.\r\n\r\nWith harsh invective, he continued to attack the British and support the Revolution, most particularly through his work as journalist and editor of The Freeman\u2019s Journal, an anti-British newspaper. During this time, he became known as the Poet of the Revolution. After the war, Freneau edited The New York Daily Advertiser and established and edited the anti-Federalist journal TThe National Gazette. In 1791, he worked as translating clerk in the Department of State of Thomas Jefferson, an avowed Democratic-Republican and then secretary of state. During that time, Freneau also vigorously attacked the Gazette of the United States, a Federalist vehicle edited by John Fenno (1751\u20131798) and supported by Alexander Hamilton, an avowed Federalist and opponent of Jefferson\u2019s. Through these critical pieces, Freneau became known as a powerful political satirist and is now considered a forerunner in satirical journalism. Coinciding with Jefferson\u2019s withdrawal from politics in 1793, Freneau\u2019s National Gazette folded.\r\n\r\nFreneau subsequently supported himself through captaining trading vessels and farming. He also wrote and published\u2014by his own hand, with his own printing press\u2014various poems and essays, with collections of his work appearing in 1795 and 1799. The love of nature and focus on the personal in his poetry strikes an early Romantic note in American literature. He offset the corruption of developing urbanism through what he described as the simplicity of Native American life. His poetry remains remarkable for its concreteness, sensuality, and intensity, qualities that herald the work of James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Herman Melville. Freneau died in 1832 from exposure during a blizzard.\r\n

Poems<\/h2>\r\n

To Sir Toby (1795)<\/h3>\r\n
\r\n

A Sugar Planter in the interior parts of Jamaica, near the City of San Jago de la Vega, (Spanish Town) 1784\r\n\u201cThe motions of his spirit are black as night, And his affections dark as Erebus.\u201d\r\n\u2014Shakespeare.<\/p>\r\n

If there exists a hell\u2014the case is clear\u2014\r\nSir Toby\u2019s slaves enjoy that portion here:\r\nHere are no blazing brimstone lakes\u2014\u2019tis true;\r\nBut kindled Rum too often burns as blue;\r\nIn which some fiend, whom nature must detest,\r\nSteeps Toby\u2019s brand, and marks poor Cudjoe\u2019s breast.\r\nHere whips on whips excite perpetual fears,\r\nAnd mingled howlings vibrate on my ears:\r\nHere nature\u2019s plagues abound, to fret and teaze,\r\nSnakes, scorpions, despots, lizards, centipees\u2014\r\nNo art, no care escapes the busy lash;\r\nAll have their dues\u2014and all are paid in cash\u2014\r\nThe eternal driver keeps a steady eye\r\nOn a black herd, who would his vengeance fly,\r\nBut chained, imprisoned, on a burning soil,\r\nFor the mean avarice of a tyrant, toil!\r\nThe lengthy cart-whip guards this monster\u2019s reign\u2014\r\nAnd cracks, like pistols, from the fields of cane.\r\nYe powers! who formed these wretched tribes, relate,\r\nWhat had they done, to merit such a fate!\r\nWhy were they brought from Eboe\u2019s sultry waste,\r\nTo see that plenty which they must not taste\u2014\r\nFood, which they cannot buy, and dare not steal;\r\nYams and potatoes\u2014many a scanty meal!\u2014\r\nOne, with a gibbet wakes his negro\u2019s fears,\r\nOne to the windmill nails him by the ears;\r\nOne keeps his slave in darkened dens, unfed,\r\nOne puts the wretch in pickle ere he\u2019s dead:\r\nThis, from a tree suspends him by the thumbs,\r\nThat, from his table grudges even the crumbs!\r\nO\u2019er yond\u2019 rough hills a tribe of females go,\r\nEach with her gourd, her infant, and her hoe;\r\nScorched by a sun that has no mercy here,\r\nDriven by a devil, whom men call overseer\u2014\r\nIn chains, twelve wretches to their labours haste;\r\nTwice twelve I saw, with iron collars graced!\u2014\r\nAre such the fruits that spring from vast domains?\r\nIs wealth, thus got, Sir Toby, worth your pains!\u2014\r\nWho would your wealth on terms, like these, possess,\r\nWhere all we see is pregnant with distress\u2014\r\nAngola\u2019s natives scourged by ruffian hands,\r\nAnd toil\u2019s hard product shipp\u2019d to foreign lands.\r\nTalk not of blossoms, and your endless spring;\r\nWhat joy, what smile, can scenes of misery bring?\u2014\r\nThough Nature, here, has every blessing spread,\r\nPoor is the labourer\u2014and how meanly fed!\u2014\r\nHere Stygian paintings light and shade renew,\r\nPictures of hell, that Virgil\u2019s[C] pencil drew:\r\nHere, surly Charons make their annual trip,\r\nAnd ghosts arrive in every Guinea ship,\r\nTo find what beasts these western isles afford,\r\nPlutonian scourges, and despotic lords:\u2014\r\nHere, they, of stuff determined to be free,\r\nMust climb the rude cliffs of the Liguanee;\r\nBeyond the clouds, in sculking haste repair,\r\nAnd hardly safe from brother traitors there.\u2014<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The Indian Burying Ground (1788)<\/h3>\r\n
\r\n

In spite of all the learned have said,\r\nI still my old opinion keep;\r\nThe posture, that we give the dead,\r\nPoints out the soul\u2019s eternal sleep.<\/p>\r\n

Not so the ancients of these lands\u2014\r\nThe Indian, when from life released,\r\nAgain is seated with his friends,\r\nAnd shares again the joyous feast.<\/p>\r\n

His imaged birds, and painted bowl,\r\nAnd venison, for a journey dressed,\r\nBespeak the nature of the soul,\r\nActivity, that knows no rest.<\/p>\r\n

His bow, for action ready bent,\r\nAnd arrows, with a head of stone,\r\nCan only mean that life is spent,\r\nAnd not the old ideas gone.<\/p>\r\n

Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,\r\nNo fraud upon the dead commit\u2014\r\nObserve the swelling turf, and say\r\nThey do not lie, but here they sit.<\/p>\r\n

Here still a lofty rock remains,\r\nOn which the curious eye may trace\r\n(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)\r\nThe fancies of a ruder race.<\/p>\r\n

Here still an aged elm aspires,\r\nBeneath whose far-projecting shade\r\n(And which the shepherd still admires)\r\nThe children of the forest played!<\/p>\r\n

There oft a restless Indian queen\r\n(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)\r\nAnd many a barbarous form is seen\r\nTo chide the man that lingers there.<\/p>\r\n

By midnight moons, o\u2019er moistening dews;\r\nIn habit for the chase arrayed,\r\nThe hunter still the deer pursues,\r\nThe hunter and the deer, a shade![364]<\/p>\r\n

And long shall timorous fancy see\r\nThe painted chief, and pointed spear,\r\nAnd Reason\u2019s self shall bow the knee\r\nTo shadows and delusions here.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cBright as the bow that spans the storm\r\nIn Erin\u2019s yellow vesture clad,\r\nA son of light\u2014a lovely form\r\nHe comes and makes her glad;\r\nNow on the grass-green turf he sits,\r\nHis tassel\u2019d horn beside him laid;\r\nNow o\u2019er the hills in chase he flits,\r\nThe hunter and the deer a shade!\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man (1795)<\/h3>\r\n