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PHILIP FRENEA U.

[Born, 1752. Died, 1832.]

PHILIP FRENEAU was the most distinguished poet of our revolutionary time. He was a voluminous writer, and many of his compositions are intrinsically worthless, or, relating to persons and events now forgotten, are no longer interesting; but enough remain to show that he had more genius and more enthusiasm than any other bard whose powers were called into action during the great struggle for liberty.

He was of French extraction. His father, an ardent and intelligent Huguenot, came to America immediately after the revocation of the edict of Nantz, in company with a number of Protestant gentlemen, who on their arrival founded the old church of Saint Esprit, in New York, and afterward, I believe, the pleasant village of New Rochelle, near that city. The poet was born on the fifteenth of January, in the year 1752. His father died while he was yet a child, but his mother attended carefully to his education, and he entered Nassau Hall at Princeton, in 1767, so far advanced in classical studies, that the president of the college made his proficiency the subject of a congratulatory letter to one of his relatives. His roommate and most devoted friend here was JAMES MADISON, and among his classmates were many others who in after time became eminent as legislators or scholars. He was graduated when nineteen years of age, and soon after removed to Philadelphia, where he was for several years on terms of familiar intimacy with the well-known FRANCIS HOPKINSON, with whom he was associated as a political writer.

He began to compose verses at an early period, and, before leaving Princeton, had formed the plan of an epic poem on the life and discoveries of CoLUMBUS, of which the " Address to Ferdinand," in this volume, is probably a fragment. After his removal to Philadelphia his attention was devoted to politics, and his poetical writings related principally to public characters and events. His satires on HUGH GAINE,† and other prominent tories, were remarkably popular in their time, though deserving of little praise for their chasteness or elegance of diction; and his patriotic songs and

The name of the poet is sometimes confounded with that of his brother, PETER FRENEAU, a celebrated partisan editor, of South Carolina, who occasionally wrote verses, though I believe nothing of more pretension than a song or an epigram. PETER FRENEAU was a man of wit and education; he was one of Mr. JEFFERSox's most ardent and influential adherents, and when the republican party came into power in South Carolina, he was made Secretary of State. THOMAS, in his "Reminiscences," remarks that "his style of writing combined the beauty and smoothness of ADDISON with the simplicity of COBBETT." He died in 1814.

+ The "King's Printer," in New York.

ballads, which are superior to any metrical compositions then written in this country, were everywhere sung with enthusiasm.

FRENEAU enjoyed the friendship of ADAMS, FRANKLIN, JEFFERSON, MADISON, and MONROE, and the last three were his constant correspondents while they lived. I have before me two letters, one written by JEFFERSON and the other by MADISON, in which he is commended to certain citizens of New York, for his extensive information, sound discretion, and general high character, as a candidate for the editorship of a journal which it was intended to establish in that city. His application appears to have been unsuccessful: probably because the project was abandoned.

As a reward for the ability and patriotism he had displayed during the war, Mr. JEFFERSON gave him a place in the Department of State; but his public employment being of too sedentary a description for a man of his ardent temperament, he soon relinquished it to conduct in Philadelphia a paper entitled "The Freeman's Journal." He was the only editor who remained at his post, during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city, in the summer of 1791. The "Journal" was unprofitable, and he gave it up, in 1793, to take the command of a merchant-ship, in which he made several voyages to Madeira, the West Indies, and other places. His naval ballads and other poems relating to the sea, written in this period, are among the most spirited and carefully finished of his productions.

Of the remainder of his history I have been able to learn but little. In 1810 he resided in Philadelphia, and he subsequently removed to Mount Pleasant, in New Jersey. He died, very suddenly, near Freehold, in that state, on the eighteenth day of December, 1832, in the eightieth year of his age. The first collection of FRENEAU's poems was published in 1786; a second edition appeared in a closely printed octavo volume at Monmouth, in New Jersey, in 1795; and a third, in two duodecimo volumes, in Philadelphia, in 1809. The last is entitled "Poems written and published during the American Revolutionary War, and now republished from the original Manuscripts, interspersed with Translations from the Ancients, and other Pieces not heretofore in Print." In 1788 he published in Philadelphia his "Miscellaneous Works, containing Essays and additional Poems," and, in 1814, "A Collection of Poems on American Affairs, and a Variety of other Subjects, chiefly Moral and Political, written between 1797 and 1815." His house at Mount Pleasant was destroyed by fire, in 1815 or 1816, and in some of his letters he laments the loss, by that misfortune, of some of his best poems, which had never been printed.

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Some real world once more may be assign'd,
Some new-born mansion for the immortal mind!
Farewell, sweet lake; farewell, surrounding woods:
To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray,
Beyond the mountains, and beyond the floods,
Beyond the Huron bay!

Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low,
My trusty bow and arrows by my side,
The cheerful bottle and the venison store;
For long the journey is that I must go,
Without a partner, and without a guide.”

He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep, Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep!

THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND.

In spite of all the learn'd have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead,

Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these landsThe 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 dress'd, 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 play'd!

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.

The North American Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture; decorating the corpse with wampum, the images of birds, quadrupeds, &c.: and (if that of a warrior) with bows, arrows, tomahawks, and other military weapons.

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase array'd,
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.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE AMERICANS WHO FELL AT EUTAW.*

Ar Eutaw Springs the valiant died;

Their limbs with dust are cover'd o'erWeep on, ye springs, your tearful tide; How many heroes are no more!

If, in this wreck of ruin, they

Can yet be thought to claim the tear, O smite your gentle breast, and say,

The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast,
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;

Sigh for the shepherds, sunk to rest!
Stranger, their humble graves adorn;

You too may fall, and ask a tear: "Tis not the beauty of the morn

That proves the evening shall be clear.

They saw their injured country's wo;

The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear-but left the shield.

Led by the conquering genius, GREENE,
The Britons they compell'd to fly:
None distant viewed the fatal plain;
None grieved, in such a cause to die.
But like the Parthians, famed of old,

Who, flying, still their arrows throw;
These routed Britons, full as bold,

Retreated, and retreating slew.

Now rest in peace, our patriot band;
Though far from Nature's limits thrown,
We trust they find a happier land,
A brighter sunshine of their own.

TO AN OLD MAN.

WHY, dotard, wouldst thou longer groan Beneath a weight of years and wo; Thy youth is lost, thy pleasures, flown, And age proclaims, ""Tis time to go."

The Battle of Eutaw, South Carolina, was fought September 8, 1781.

To willows sad and weeping yews

With us a while, old man, repair, Nor to the vault thy steps refuse;

Thy constant home must soon be there.

To summer suns and winter moons
Prepare to bid a long adieu;
Autumnal seasons shall return,

And spring shall bloom, but not for you.
Why so perplex'd with cares and toil
To rest upon this darksome road?
"Tis but a thin, a thirsty soil,

A barren and a bleak abode.

Constrain'd to dwell with pain and care, These dregs of life are bought too dear; "Tis better far to die, than bear

The torments of life's closing year.

Subjected to perpetual ills,

A thousand deaths around us grow: The frost the tender blossom kills,

And roses wither as they blow.

Cold, nipping winds your fruits assail;
The blasted apple seeks the ground;
The peaches fall, the cherries fail;
The grape receives a mortal wound.
The breeze, that gently ought to blow,

Swells to a storm, and rends the main; The sun, that charm'd the grass to grow, Turns hostile, and consumes the plain;

The mountains waste, the shores decay,

Once purling streams are dead and dry"Twas Nature's work-'tis Nature's play, And Nature says, that all must die.

Yon flaming lamp, the source of light,

In chaos dark may shroud his beam, And leave the world to mother Night, A farce, a phantom, or a dream. What now is young, must soon be old:

Whate'er we love, we soon must leave: "Tis now too hot, 'tis now too coldTo live, is nothing but to grieve.

How bright the morn her course begun!
No mists bedimm'd the solar sphere;
The clouds arise-they shade the sun,
For nothing can be constant here.

Now hope the longing soul employs,
In expectation we are bless'd;
But soon the airy phantom flies,
For, lo! the treasure is possess'd.
Those monarchs proud, that havoc spread,
(While pensive REASON dropt a tear,)
Those monarchs have to darkness fled,
And ruin bounds their mad career.

The grandeur of this earthly round,
Where folly would forever stay,
Is but a name, is but a sound-
Mere emptiness and vanity.

Give me the stars, give me the skies, Give me the heaven's remotest sphere, Above these gloomy scenes to rise

Of desolation and despair.

Those native fires, that warm'd the mind,
Now languid grown, too dimly glow,
Joy has to grief the heart resign'd,
And love, itself, is changed to wo.
The joys of wine are all you boast,-

These, for a moment, damp your pain; The gleam is o'er, the charm is lost

And darkness clouds the soul again. Then seek no more for bliss below,

Where real bliss can ne'er be found; Aspire where sweeter blossoms blow,

And fairer flowers bedeck the ground; Where plants of life the plains invest, And green eternal crowns the year :The little god, that warms the breast, Is weary of his mansion here. Like Phospher, sent before the day, His height meridian to regain, The dawn arrives-he must not stay To shiver on a frozen plain. Life's journey past, for fate prepare,— "Tis but the freedom of the mind; Jove made us mortal-his we are,

To Jove be all our cares resign'd.

COLUMBUS TO FERDINAND.*

ILLUSTRIOUS monarch of Iberia's soil,
Too long I wait permission to depart;
Sick of delays, I beg thy listening ear-

Shine forth the patron and the prince of art.

While yet Columbus breathes the vital air,

Grant his request to pass the western main: Reserve this glory for thy native soil,

And, what must please thee more, for thy own reign.

Of this huge globe, how small a part we knowDoes heaven their worlds to western suns deny! How disproportion'd to the mighty deep

The lands that yet in human prospect lie!

Does Cynthia, when to western skies arrived,

Spend her moist beam upon the barren main, And ne'er illume with midnight splendour, she, The natives dancing on the lightsome green? Should the vast circuit of the world contain

Such wastes of ocean and such scanty land? "Tis reason's voice that bids me think not so; I think more nobly of the Almighty hand.

*Columbus was a considerable number of years engaged in soliciting the court of Spain to fit him out, in order to discover a new continent, which he imagined to exist somewhere in the western parts of the ocean. During his negotiations, he is here supposed to address King Ferdinand in the above stanzas.

Does yon fair lamp trace half the circle round

To light mere waves and monsters of the seas? No; be there must, beyond the billowy waste, Islands, and men, and animals, and trees. An unremitting flame my breast inspires

To seek new lands amid the barren waves, Where, falling low, the source of day descends, And the blue sea his evening visage laves. Hear, in his tragic lay, Cordova's sage :* "The time may come, when numerous years are past,

When ocean will unloose the bands of things,
And an unbounded region rise at last;

And TYPHIS may disclose the mighty land,

Far, far away, where none have roved before; Nor will the world's remotest region be

Gibraltar's rock, or THULE's savage shore.” Fired at the theme, I languish to depart;

Supply the bark, and bid Columbus sail; He fears no storms upon the untravell'd deep; Reason shall steer, and skill disarm the gale. Nor does he dread to miss the intended course, Though far from land the reeling galley stray, And skies above, and gulfy seas below,

Be the sole objects seen for many a day. Think not that Nature has unveil'd in vain The mystic magnet to the mortal eye: So late have we the guiding needle plann'd, Only to sail beneath our native sky? Ere this was known, the ruling power of all Form'd for our use an ocean in the land, Its breadth so small, we could not wander long, Nor long be absent from the neighbouring strand. Short was the course, and guided by the stars,

But stars no more must point our daring way; The Bear shall sink, and every guard be drowned, And great Arcturus scarce escape the sea,

When southward we shall steer- -O grant my wish,

Supply the bark, and bid Columbus sail, He dreads no tempests on the untravell'd deep, Reason shall steer, and skill disarm the gale.

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE.

FAIR flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch'd thy honey'd blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

*Seneca, the poet, a native of Cordova in Spain: "Venient annis secula seris,

Quibus oceanus vincula rerum
Laret, et ingens pateat tellus,
Typhisque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris ultima Thule."

Seneca, Med., act iii., v. 375.

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