PHILIP FRENEAU

[1752–1832]

The Indian Burying Ground

Widely regarded as the father of American literature, Philip Freneau (1752–1832) came from a wealthy New York family. At Princeton University, he was a roommate of James Madison. He was not only an activist, public writer, and the “poet of the Revolution” but also a private romantic poet who spent two years in the West Indies writing of the beauties of nature and learning navigation, after which he took to sea as a ship’s captain. Some of his best poems, including “The Indian Burying Ground” and the beautiful lyric “The Wild Honey Suckle,” which established him as an important American precursor of the Romantics, were written in stolen moments during the hectic 1780s. In 1801 he retired to a farm, worked on his poems, and wrote essays attacking the greed and selfishness of corrupt politicians.

In spite of all the learned have said,

I still my opinion keep;

The posture, that we give the dead,

Points out the soul’s eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands—

The Indian, when from life released,

Again is seated with his friends,

And shares again the joyous feast.

His imaged birds, and painted bowl,

And venison, for a journey dressed,

Bespeak the nature of the soul,

Activity, that knows no rest.

His bow, for action ready bent,

And arrows, with a head of stone,

Can only mean that life is spent,

And not the old ideas gone.

Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,

No fraud upon the dead commit—

Observe the swelling turf, and say

They do not lie, but here they sit.

Here still a lofty rock remains,

On which the curious eye may trace

(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)

The fancies of a ruder race.

Here still an aged elm aspires,

Beneath whose far-projecting shade

(And which the shepherd still admires)

The children of the forest played!

There oft a restless Indian queen

(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)

And many a barbarous form is seen

To chide the man that lingers there.

By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews;

In habit for the chase arrayed,

The hunter still the deer pursues,

The hunter and the deer, a shade!

And long shall timorous fancy see

The painted chief, and pointed spear,

And Reason’s self shall bow the knee

To shadows and delusions here.