The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Poems of Philip Freneau (Volume III).

These Hills, the pride of all the coast,
To mighty distance seen,
With aspect bold and rugged brow,
That shade the neighbouring main:
These heights, for solitude design'd,
This rude, resounding shore—
These vales impervious to the wind,
Tall oaks, that to the tempest bend,
Half Druid, I adore.

From distant lands, a thousand sails
Your hazy summits greet—
You saw the angry Briton come,
You saw him, last, retreat!
With towering crest, you first appear
The news of land to tell;
To him that comes, fresh joys impart,
To him that goes, a heavy heart,
The lover's long farewell.

'Tis your's to see the sailor bold,[2]
Of persevering mind,
To see him rove in search of care,
And leave true bliss behind;
To see him spread his flowing sails
To trace a tiresome road,
By wintry seas and tempests chac'd
To see him o'er the ocean haste,
A comfortless abode!

Your thousand springs of waters blue
What luxury to sip,
As from the mountain's breast they flow
To moisten Flora's lip!
In vast retirements herd the deer,
Where forests round them rise,
Dark groves, their tops in æther lost,
That, haunted still by Huddy's [3] ghost,
The trembling rustic flies.

Proud heights! with pain so often seen,
(With joy beheld once more)
On your firm base I take my stand,
Tenacious of the shore:—
Let those who pant for wealth or fame
Pursue the watery road;—
Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights,
And health, attend these favourite heights,
Retirement's blest abode!

[1] The first trace I can find of this poem is in the Freeman's Journal, February 2, 1791, where it is entitled "Stanzas written on the Hills of Neversink near Sandy Hook, 1790." In the republication of the poem in the National Gazette, November 28, 1791, the month "July" was added to the title. It was the poet's valedictory to the ocean after his wanderings. He was married in May, 1790, and he now evidently looked forward to a settled career. The poem has been placed slightly out of order as will be seen. It was republished only in the 1795 edition which the text follows. The first five lines of the original version were as follows:

"In early days and vanished years
To rougher toils resigned,
You saw me rove in search of care
And leave true bliss behind;
You saw me rig the barque so trim," etc.

THE RISING EMPIRE [4]

On American Antiquity.[5]

America, to every climate known,
Spreads her broad bosom to the burning zone,
To either pole extends her vast domain
Where varying suns o'er different summers reign.
Wide wandering streams, vast plains, and pathless woods,
Bold shores, confined by circumscribing floods,
Denote this land, whose fertile, flowery breast
Teems with all life—and man, its nobler guest.
In days of old, from ocean's deepest bed,
Gulphs unexplored, and countries of the dead,
Rous'd by some voice, that shook all nature's frame,
From the vast depths this new creation came:
Perpetual change its varying nature feels,
The wave once flow'd that now with frost congeals,
Suns on its breast have shed a feebler fire,
Oceans have roll'd where mountains now aspire.
The soil's proud lord a changeful temper knows,
From differing earths his various nature grows:
Long, long before the time that sophists plan
Existed in these woods the race of man,
Warm'd into life by some creating flame,
All worlds pervading, and through all, the same!
Not from the west their swarthy tribes they brought,
As Europe's pride and Asia's folly taught;—
With the same ease the great disposing power
Produced a man, a reptile, or a flower:—
See the swift deer, in lonely wilds that strays,
See the tall elk, that in the valley plays,
See the fierce tiger's raging, ravenous band,
And wolves (their race as ancient as the land)
Did these of old from bleak Kamschatka come,
And traverse seas, to find a happier home?—
No?—from the dust, this common dust, they drew
Their different forms, proud man, that moulded you.
At first, half beasts, untaught to till the land,
Careless, you fed from Nature's fostering hand;
In depths of deserts dream'd your lives away,
Sought no new worlds, nor look'd beyond to-day:
The Almighty power, that lives and breathes through all,
Bade some faint rays on these dark nations fall;
Early, to them did reasoning souls impart,
Inventive genius, and some dawn of art;
Then left them here, with sense enough to win,
Or cheat the bear, or panther of his skin;
Mean huts to build, regardless of their form,
Completely blest, if shelter'd from the storm;
To see the seasons change, day turn to night:
Bow to the lamps of heaven that gave them light,
Beam'd on the spring, or bade the summer glow,
Their harvests ripen, and their gardens grow—

A View of Rhode Island [6]

Wash'd by surrounding seas, and bold her coasts,
A grateful soil the fair Rhode Island boasts.
The admiring eye no happier fields can trace,
Here seas are crowned with the scaly race,
Nature has strove to make her native blest
And owns no fairer Eden in the west:
Here lovliest dames in frequent circles seen,
Catch the fine tint of health from beauty's queen,
No aid they want to seize the enraptur'd view
Nor art's false colours to improve the true;
Here, love the traveller holds—loth to depart
Some charming creature slays his wandering heart,
Bids him forget from clime to clime to rove,
And even dull prudence—here—submits to love.
On grassy farms, their souls enslav'd to gain,
Reside the masters of the rural reign;
Vast herds they feed, that glut the abundant pail,
Break the stiff sod, or freight the adventurous sail;
The nervous steed, the stanchest of the kind
Here walks his rounds in pastures unconfin'd:—
Half that the lands produce or seas contain
To other shores transported o'er the main
Returns in coin, to cheer the miser's eye,
In foreign sweets, that fancied wants supply,
Or tawdry stuffs, to deck the limbs of pride,
That thus expends what avarice strove to hide.
But, hostile to themselves, this jarring race
In desperate interests, different plans embrace—
One, bold in wrong, his paper fabric rears
And steels his bosom to the orphan's tears
To those he ruin'd grants no late relief!
But leaves the wretched to subsist on grief!
In lost advice his days the gownsman spends,
He gives his prayers and teachings to the winds,—
In vain he tells of virtue's sure reward;
No words but this attract a swain's regard—
Talk not of Laws!—where innocence must fall,
One spark of honour more than damns them all;
And vainly Science her assistance lends
Where knavery shapes it to the basest ends,
Fraud walks at large,—each selfish passion reigns,
And cheats enforce what honesty disdains.
Hurt at the view, I leave the ungrateful shore
And thy rough soil, Connecticut, explore:

Terra Vulpina, or, the Land of Foxes [7]

Here fond remembrance stampt her much loved names,
Here boasts the soil its London and its Thames;
Through all her shores commodious ports abound,
Clear flow the waters of the unequal ground;
Cold nipping winds a lengthened winter bring,
Late rise the products of the unwilling spring,
The impoverished fields the labourer's pains disgrace,
And hawks and vultures scream through all the place;
The broken soil a nervous breed requires,
Where the rough glebe no generous crops admires—
Dame Nature meanly did her gifts impart,
But smiles to see how much is forced by art.
As Boreas keen, who guides their wintry reign,
All bow to lucre, all are bent on gain.
In contact close their neat abodes are thrown,
Its house, each acre; every mile, its town;
With glittering spire the frequent church is seen,[8]
Where yews and myrtles wave their gloomy green,
Where fast-day sermons tell the hungry guest
That a cameleon's dinner is the best:
There mobs of deacons awe the ungodly wight,
And hell's black master meets the unequal fight—
Eternal squabblings grease the lawyer's paw,
All have their suits, and all have studied Law:
With tongue, that Art and Nature taught to speak,
Some rave in Latin, some dispute in Greek:
Proud of their parts, in ancient lore they shine,
And one month's study makes a learned Divine;[9]
Bards of huge fame in every hamlet rise,
Each (in idea) of Virgilian size:
Even beardless lads a rhyming knack display—
Iliads begun, and finished in a day!
Rhymes, that of old on Blackmore's wheel were spun,
Come rattling down on Zion's reverend son;[10]
Madly presumed time's vortex to defy!
Things born to live an hour—then squeak and die.
Some, to grow rich, through Indian forests roam,
Some deem it best to stay and thrive at home:
In spite of all the priest and squire can say,
This world—this wicked world—will have its way;
Honest through fear, religious by constraint,
How hard to tell the sharper from the saint!—
Fond of discourse, with deep designing views
They pump the unwary traveller of his news;
Fond of that news, but fonder to be paid,
Each house a tavern, claims a tavern's trade,
While he that comes as surely hears them praise
The hospitality of modern days.
Yet, brave in arms, of enterprizing soul,
They tempt old Neptune to the farthest pole,
In learning's walks explore the mazy way,
(For genius there has shed his golden ray)
In war's bold art through many a contest tried
True to themselves, they took the nobler side,
And party feuds forgot, joined to agree
That power alone supreme—that left them free.

Massachusetts [11]

Here, in vast flocks, the fleecy nation strays,
Here, endless herds the upland meadow graze,
Here smiling plenty crowns the labourer's pain
And blooming beauty weds the industrious swain:
Were this thy all, what happier state could be!—
But avarice drives the native to the sea,
Fictitious wants all thoughts of ease controul,
Proud Independence sways the aspiring soul,
'Midst foreign waves, a stranger to repose,
Through the moist world the keen adventurer goes;
Not India's seas restrain his daring sail,
Far to the south he seeks the polar whale:
From those vast banks where frequent tempests rave,
And fogs eternal brood upon the wave,
There (furled his sail) his daring hold he keeps,
Drags from their depths the natives of those deeps;
Then to some distant clime explores his way,
Bold avarice spurs him on—he must obey.
Yet from such aims one great effect we trace
That holds in happier bonds this restless race;
Like some deep lake, by circling shores comprest,
Man's nature tends to universal rest:
Unfed by springs, that find some secret pass
To mix their current with the mightier mass,
Unmoved by moons, that some strange impulse guides
To lift its waters, and propel its tides,
Unvext by winds, that scowl across its waste,
Tear up the wave, and discompose its breast,
Soon would that lake (a putrid nuisance grown,)
Lose all its virtue, praised or prized by none:
Thus, avarice lends new vigour to mankind,
Not vainly planted in the unsteady mind;
With her, Ambition linked, they proudly drive,
Rule all our race, and keep the world alive.
Here, first, to quench her once loved Freedom's flame,
With their proud fleets, Britannia's warriors came;
Here, sure to conquer, she began her fires,
Here, sent her lords, her admirals, and her squires:
All, all too weak to effect the vast design [12]
For which we saw half Europe's arms combine,
Uncounted navies rove from main to main,
Threats, bribery, treachery—tried and tried again;
Mandate on mandate, edict, and decree,
To rivet fetters, and enslave the free!
Long, long from Boston's hills shall strangers gaze
On those vast mounds that magic seemed to raise;
Stupendous piles that hastened Britain's flight,
Extended hills, the offspring of a night!—
In that devoted town they hoped to stay
And, fed by rapine, sleep soft years away:
Vain hopes, vain schemes—the unconquered spirit rose
That still survived through all succeeding woes;
Imprisoned crowds, in cruel durance held,
Disarmed, restrained from honour's earliest field;
Imprisoned thousands, worn with poignant grief,
Now, half adoring, met their guardian chief,[A]
Whose thundering cannon bade the foe retreat,
Disgrace their portion, and their rout complete.

A Batavian Picture [13]

Sons of the earth, for plodding genius fam'd,
Batavia long her earth-born natives claim'd:
Begot from industry, and not from love,
Swarming at length, to these fair climes they move.—
Still in these climes their numerous race survive,[14]
And, born to labour, still are found to thrive;
Thro' rain and sunshine toiling for their heirs
They hold no nation on this earth like theirs.
Fond of themselves, no generous motives bind,
To those that speak their gibberish, only kind:—
Yet still some virtues, candour must confess,
And truth shall own, some virtues they possess:
Where'er they fix, all nature smiles around
Groves bend with fruit and plenty clothes the ground;
No barren trees to shade their domes are seen,
Trees must be fertile, and their dwellings clean,
No idle fancy dares its whims apply,
Or hope attention from the master's eye,
All tends to something that must pelf produce,
All for some end, and every thing its use:—
Eternal scowerings keep their floors afloat,
Neat as the outside of the Sunday coat;
The hoe, the loom, the female band employ,
These all their pleasure, these their darling joy;—
The strong-ribb'd lass no idle passions move,
No frail ideas of romantic love;
He to her heart the readiest path can find
Who comes with gold, and courts her to be kind,
She heeds not valour, learning, wit, or birth,
Minds not the swain—but asks him what he's worth.
No female fears in her firm breast prevail,
The helm she handles and she trims the sail,
In some small barque the way to market finds,
Hauls aft the sheet, or veers it to the winds,
While placed a-head, subservient to her will,
Hans smokes his pipe, and wonders at her skill.
Health to their toils—thus may they still go on—
Curse on my pen! What pictures have I drawn!
Is this the general taste? No (Truth replies)—
If fond of beauty, guiltless of disguise,
See—(where, the social circle meant to grace)
The fair Cesarean shades her lovely face,—
She, earlier held to happier tasks at home,
Prefers the labours that her sex become,
Remote from view, directs some favourite art,
And leaves to hardier man the ruder part.

Pennsylvania

Spread with stupendous hills, far from the main,
Fair Pennsylvania holds her golden rein,
In fertile fields her wheaten harvest grows,
Charged with its freights her favorite Delaware flows;
From Erie's Lake her soil with plenty teems
To where the Schuylkill rolls his limpid streams—
Sweet stream! what pencil can thy beauties tell—
Where, wandering downward through the woody vale,
Thy varying scenes to rural bliss invite,
To health and pleasure add a new delight:
Here Juniata, too, allures the swain,
And gay Cadorus roves along the plain;
Sweetara, tumbling from the distant hill,
Steals through the waste, to turn the industrious mill—
Where'er those floods through groves or mountains stray,
That God of Nature still directs the way,
With fondest care has traced each river's bed
And mighty streams thro' mighty forests led,
Bade agriculture thus export her freight,
The strength and glory of this favoured State.
She, famed for science, arts, and polished men,
Admires her Franklin, but adores her Penn,
Who, wandering here, made barren forests bloom,
And the new soil a happier robe assume:
He planned no schemes that virtue disapproves,
He robbed no Indian of his native groves,
But, just to all, beheld his tribes increase,
Did what he could to bind the world in peace,
And, far retreating from a selfish band,
Bade Freedom flourish in this foreign land.
Gay towns unnumbered shine through all her plains,
Here every art its happiest height attains:
The graceful ship, on nice proportions planned,
Here finds perfection from the builder's hand,
To distant worlds commercial visits pays,
Or war's bold thunder o'er the deep conveys.[15]

Maryland

Laved by vast depths that swell on either side
Where Chesapeake intrudes his midway tide,
Gay Maryland attracts the admiring eye,
A fertile region with a temperate sky.
In years elapsed, her heroes of renown
From British Anna named one favourite town:[B]
But, lost her commerce, though she guards their laws,
Proud Baltimore that envied commerce draws.
Few are the years since there, at random placed,
Some wretched huts her quiet-port disgraced;
Safe from all winds, and covered from the bay,
There, at his ease, the thoughtless native lay.
Now, rich and great, no more a slave to sloth,
She claims importance from her towering growth—
High in renown, her streets and domes arranged,
A groupe of cabins to a city changed.
Though rich at home, to foreign lands they stray,
For foreign trappings trade the wealth away.
Politest manners through their towns prevail,
And pleasure revels, though their funds should fail;
In each gay dome, soft music charms its lord,
Where female beauty strikes the trembling chord;
On the fine air with nicest touches dwells,
While from the tongue the according ditty swells:
Proud to be seen, 'tis their's to place delight
In dances measured by the winter's night,
The evening feast, that wine and mirth prolong,
The lamp of splendor, and the midnight song.
Religion here no gloomy garb assumes,
Exchanged her tears for patches and for plumes:
The blooming belle (untaught heaven's beaus to win)
Talks not of seraphs, but the world she's in:
Attached to earth, here born, and to decay,
She leaves to better worlds all finer clay.
In those, whom choice or different fortunes place
On rural scenes, a different mind we trace;
There solitude, that still to dullness tends,
To rustic forms no sprightly action lends;
Heeds not the garb, mopes o'er the evening fire;
And bids the maiden from the man retire.
On winding floods the lofty mansion stands,
That casts a mournful view o'er neighbouring lands;
There the sad master strays amidst his grounds,
Directs his negroes, or reviews his hounds;
Then home returning, plies his pasteboard play,
Or dreams o'er wine, that hardly makes him gay:
If some chance guest arrive in weary plight,
He more than bids him welcome for the night;
Kind to profusion, spares no pains to please,
Gives him the product of his fields and trees;
On his rich board shines plenty from her source,
—The meanest dish of all his own discourse.

Old Virginia [16]

Vast in extent, Virginia meets our view,
With streams immense, dark groves, and mountains blue;
First in provincial rank she long was seen,
Built the first town, and first subdued the plain:
This was her praise—but what can years avail,
When times succeeding see her efforts fail!
On northern fields more vigorous arts display,
Where pleasure holds no universal sway;
No herds of slaves parade their sooty band
From the rough plough to save the fopling's hand,
Where urgent wants the daily pittance ask,
Compel to labour, and complete the task.[17]
A race of slaves, throughout their country spread,
From different soils extort the owner's bread;[18]
Averse to toil, the natives still rely
On the sad negro for the year's supply;[19]
He, patient, early quits his poor abode,
Toils at the hoe, or totes some ponderous load,[20]
Sweats at the axe, or, pensive and forlorn,
Sighs for the eve, to parch his stinted corn!
With watchful eye maintains his much-loved fire,
Nor even in summer lets its sparks expire—
At night returns, his evening toils to share,
Lament his rags, or sleep away his care,
Bind up the recent wound, with many a groan;
Or thank his gods that Sunday is his own.
To these far climes the scheming Scotchman flies,
Quits his bleak hills to court Virginian skies;
Removed from oat-meal, sour-crout, debts, and duns,
Prudent, he hastes to bask in kinder suns;
Marks well the native—views his weaker side,
And heaps up wealth from luxury and pride,
Exports the produce of a thousand plains,
Nor fears a rival, to divide his gains.
Deep in their beds, as distant to their source
Here many a river winds its wandering course:
Proud of her bulky freight, through plains and woods
Moves the tall ship, majestic, o'er the floods,
Where James's strength the ocean brine repels,
Or, like a sea, the deep Potowmack swells:
Yet here the sailor views with wondering eye
Impoverished fields that near their margins lie,
Mercantile towns, where languor holds her reign,
And boors inactive, on the exhausted plain.[21]

[4] In the Charleston City Gazette or Daily Advertiser of February 2, 1790, appeared "A Characteristic Sketch of the Long Island Dutch. From The Rising Empire: a Poem." Two days later the New York Daily Advertiser published "A View of Rhode Island. [Extracted from a new Poem, entitled The Rising Empire, not yet published.]" That Freneau for a time was actively engaged upon this projected volume is evident from the poems on the states which appeared in the Daily Advertiser, chiefly during the month of March, 1790. The last of these poems, "A Descriptive Sketch of Virginia," appeared June 11, 1790. On June 25 Freneau issued proposals for a new volume of poems, presumably to bear the title "The Rising Empire," but the volume was never published. Many of the pieces that undoubtedly would have gone to make up the book appeared in the Daily Advertiser. Of those that came directly under the title (and they are doubtless but a fragment of what the poet intended to write) all but "A View of Rhode Island" appeared in a greatly changed form in the poet's later volumes. I have followed in each case the edition of 1809.

[15] The earliest version, as it appeared in the Daily Advertiser, March 17, 1790, had the following in place of the last six lines:

"Thy followers, Fox, pacific in each aim,
In this far climate still revere your name;
To them long practice prudent foresight gave,
Proof to the projects of the keenest knave.
On things to come they fix an anxious eye
Fond to be thought the favourites of the sky,
Paths of their own they clear to future bliss,
Praise other worlds but keep their hold on this.
Nor mean I, hence, to censure or condemn,
Perhaps 'twere best the world should think like them;—
What tho' on visions they may place their trust,
I hold their general principles are just,
Good will to all, themselves their first great care,
Precise in dealing, foes to blood and war;
Let kings invade, or potentates assault,
No aid they lend, for passive to a fault,
They still are found, all complaisant to power
To bow to ruffians in the trying hour."

PART IV

THE PERIOD OF EDITORSHIP

1790—1797

THE

POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU

NEVERSINK [1]

THE RISING EMPIRE [4]

On American Antiquity.[5]

A View of Rhode Island [6]

Terra Vulpina, or, the Land of Foxes [7]

Massachusetts [11]

A Batavian Picture [13]

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Old Virginia [16]

PART IV

THE PERIOD OF EDITORSHIP

1790—1797

THE

POEMS OF PHILIP FRENEAU

NEVERSINK[1]

THE RISING EMPIRE[4]

On American Antiquity.[5]

A View of Rhode Island[6]

Terra Vulpina, or, the Land of Foxes[7]

Massachusetts[11]

A Batavian Picture[13]

Pennsylvania

Maryland

Old Virginia[16]

NEVERSINK [1]

THE RISING EMPIRE [4]

A View of Rhode Island [6]

Terra Vulpina, or, the Land of Foxes [7]

Massachusetts [11]

A Batavian Picture [13]

Old Virginia [16]