The Last Poems of Philip Freneau | ||
Stanzas on the Great Comet: To Ismenia
Does he portend the storms of war:
Parading in the blue expanse,
Does he predict the doom of France?
He hovers o'er our continent:
These comets are prodigious things,
They fly without the aid of wings:
From whence they came, or where they go,
You cannot tell, nor do I know.
In parabolic orbits run?—
It may be so—and some have said
This convex Earth, on which we tread,
This Earth, which now in circles roll'd
Is such an orbit mov'd of old!
The mighty mass, projected, flew
And in the solar beams array'd,
A formidable tail display'd!
She comes to take a freight of souls,
The souls on earth condemned to wait
Translation to the Comet State.
Far southward travels day and night,
It keeps its circle round the pole
And sees the planets near it roll,
But never will their course molest
'Till the Creator sees it best.
The souls from parted bodies are,
Are cloath'd again in nobler dress,
In the Comet find all happiness.
The mind is destined to that sphere,
May, while we here her husk entomb,
In Jove's celestial gardens bloom.
His heated atmospheric rays
May bring new seasons to his clime,
No doubt, his Spring, or Summer time.
His Autumn will its course begin,
When e'er its tail, to disappear,
Becomes a circumambient sphere.
Receding from the view of men,
The Comet shall his course pursue
'Till his aphelion comes in view,
Sit snug at home and pass their jokes,
No doubt, enjoy the evening fire,
The glass, the parson, and the 'squire,
See oceans rage, hear tempests blow,
And scorn them all—as we do now.
The Neglected Husband
A steady friendship, or continual strife.
The pride, and the toast of the town,
He could love her, he thought, very well,
Let her smile, let her scold, let her frown.
Not a fig, if he lived or he died;
If a fop with a feather she saw
His attentions were rarely denied.
Thus slighted, neglected, distress'd,
Yet, rather than wrangle and brawl
He made of his bargain the best.
Or posing the works of the dead;
He scribbled a little, they say,
When the notion came into his head.
Than Richard neglected the pen—
She cared not a cent what he writ,
Or thought, about women or men.
She flirted away to the ball;
And told him, he sadly mistook,
For cards were the best of them all.
She saw it, and said with a groan,
“I see you are going my Dick,
And therefore I let you alone.
For doses and drenches prepare;
There's Dolly, and Sambo, and Sue—
I leave you, my dear, in their care.”—
In a humor so cheerful and gay,
And said, with a sigh from his heart,
These women will have their own way.
The cruel neglect of his spouse,
Yet loved her, and call'd her his dear—
But thought she had broken church vows.
He muttered with groaning, and pain,
I am going, he peevishly said,
Where I never will marry again.
And sunk to the land of repose,
Where madam must go, in her turn,
When rid of her dandies and beaus.
Nor think if I do that I rave,
She dress'd and she went to the Play,
And Richard was laid in his grave.
Stanzas Written for a Lad
Who guards me when the danger's nigh,
Preventing all my steps abroad
From lighting on the serpent sly.
When the other step had been my last,
But thou art still my constant aid,
Both for the present and the past.
No thought had I of death so near;
No thought, in youth's progressing bloom,
That life was just concluding here!
That his cursed head should bruise my heel;
And, for my sins, that I should bleed,
Thy judgment had been righteous still.
Had then thy God-like image foiled,
And, through excess of rage and pain,
Faint nature had in death recoiled.—
To guard me from this treacherous foe,
My endless praises he shall win
And all the world his mercies know.
To Mr. Blanchard, the Celebrated Aeronaut
Coelum ipsum petimus stuttistra.
Horace.
No Weaver meant should trail above
The surface of the earth we tread,
To deck the matron or the maid.
With silk to soar above mankind:—
On silk you hang your splendid car
And mount towards the morning star.
Would you amidst red lightnings play;
Meet sulphurous blasts, and fear them not—
Is Phaeton's sad fate forgot?
And this Balloon, of mighty size,
Will to the astonish'd eye appear,
An atom wafted thro' the air.
Departed Ghosts, and shadowy forms,
Vast tracts of aether, and, what's more,
A sea of space without a shore!—
To Saturn's Moons, undaunted stray;
Or, wafted on a silken wing,
Alight on Saturn's double ring?
Or in her flight fair Venus chase;
Would you, like her, perform the tour
Of sixty thousand miles an hour?—
He must propel, who did create—
By him, indeed, are wonders done
Who follows Venus round the sun.
Strange forms, I guess—not such as we;
Alarming shapes, yet seen by none;
For every planet has its own.
You may approach some satellite,
Some of the shining train above
That circle round the orb of Jove.
You might become a stranger here:
There you might be, if there you fly,
A giant sixty fathoms high.
Here, men are men of little weight:
There, Polypheme, it might be shown,
Is but a middle sized baboom.—
Pray tell us when you stop at last;
Would you with gods that æther share,
Or dine on atmospheric air?—
To leave the fogs that round us rise,
Beyond this world of little things.
Stay here, Blanchard, 'till death or fate
To which, yourself, like us, must bow,
Shall send you where you want to go.
Your wishes may be gratified,
And you shall go, as swift as thought,
Where nature has more finely wrought,
A more sublime, enchanting scene
Than thought depicts or poets feign.
The Fortunate Blacksmith
At fair Priscilla's iron heart,
And, after all, with much ado,
Hard work he had to pierce it through.
She carried anvils in her breast;
“A heavy sledge, at least, said he,
Come hither friends, and pity me!”
This nymph of steel we should have said,
What bellows shall its torrent cast
To put love's furnace in a blast!
In steel or iron to confide;
To love, to wed a hammering lad,
The world, she guess'd, would think her mad.
And drown him in the tempering trough,
His life he purposed to destroy,
And yet the nymph continued coy.
I cannot bear an iron blade”
She wanted Gold, that dearer ore,
Which every nymph is hunting for.
The iron melted in her eyes.
The anvil from her breast she shoved,
And said, your suit is now approv'd
Was headed with a silver pin—
And now approach'd the wedding day;
To church the lovers took their way:
And he, an honour to his trade,
While through the streets the note resounds,
A blacksmith with a thousand pounds!
May Spanish dollars make her white,
May blacksmiths from this union rise
And not their father's trade despise.
Salutary Maxims, Or, the Way of the World. To a Misanthrope, or Man-Hater.
Would you peace and safety find,To live in quiet with mankind,
Do not quarrel with their notions;
Let each have his own devotions;
Interfere not with their strife,
Take no part with man or wife;
Meddle not with satire's pen,
Make no friendship with mean men;
Blow not up foul discord's bellows,
Drink no liquor with rude fellows;
Fools, at best that gape and grin,
Devils, when the liquor's in.
More than all, I would advise
Always act with some disguise:
Strive to do not too much good—
Let these rules be understood,
With another we would mention
That would hinder much dissention,
Scolding hags and peevish men,
Shun them as a lion's den;
Hug and kiss the girl you love,
But hope no angels from above.
Dream not of celestial charms;
You clasp no goddess in your arms—
Goddesses are sometimes made—
Quite enough, to spoil the trade.
To command the pure good will
Of human kind, remember, still,
This is the SECRET, this is the charm—
DO THEM NEITHER—GOOD NOR HARM.
Stanzas Written in an Ancient Burial Ground
(An ancient Roman said)
“We have the right, and tis the best
To mingle with the dead”
And days of woe arrive;
'Tis wrong to do the coward act,
'Tis nobler, far, to live.
Tired of a Sun that gave them no delight.
With life disgust'ed, forced their grovelling way,
To the dark chambers of eternal night.
That warms our clay, a spirit that commands,
For some wise cause, it animates our frame,
Here doom'd to stay 'till fate dissolves the bands.
Aims at the heart the death conducting steel,
Not guiltless at the awful Bar will stand,
Were all are judged, and doom'd without appeal.
A task of toil—but with it man should bear,
'Till life's rude winter, and its storms, are past
And brighter scenes in brighter worlds appear.
Epitaph Upon a Spanish Horse
Safe interr'd at Dead man's Lift;
Now no longer strong or swift.
May I, sirs, your pardon seek,
If the horse himself shall speak:
Oft he held my tightening rein,
Briskly cantering o'er the plain.
Many a time the monarch rid
With strange fancies in his head,
Safely now, I may suppose:—
Hear it then, my friends and foes.
With my ever honored load
I threw my master in the mud.
Till the king got overheated,
On my back no more he seated.
He sent me to America
To witness presidential sway.
T' escape the Holy Inquisition;
Such the purpose of my mission.
Hither I came to find a man,
And die—a GOOD REPUBLICAN.”
The Tye-Wig
I think I hear the Tye-Wig say,
“You might have worn me in your youth,
Or even a Tye-Wig more uncouth,
When blood ran brisk, and Fancy said
Jacob! assist the barber's trade.”—
The days of youth, your vernal prime,
When months and years were cheery, all,
And Nature, in her summer time,
Thus sung to all who chose to hear,
My Summer lasts not all the year.
As fair succeeds to rain,
So we retire—another race
Comes laughing o'er the plain:
Well!—let them jest, and laugh and play:
We had our turn, and so have they.
When five and twenty was in bloom;
But what are wigs, like this, to you,
Now lingering near the silent tomb?—
Such wigs become not sixty eight,
Grey hairs would better suit your pate.
Your tottering step it can't conceal;
In every step old age we trace,
That sees you travelling down the hill:—
Then throw this boyish wig away
And wear again your head of grey.
Letitia
And notions, why should they have not?
The world is but notions, Philosophers say,
And whims are humanity's lot.
And, who was the youngster—? (say you)
He was a young blacksmith, for tell it I can,
But his name shall be kept out of view.
Refus'd to return her regard—
His door of affection he would not unlock,
Which the nymph took abundantly hard.
How blest might we travel thro' life,
Yourself at your anvil and I at my wheel,
The fondest and faithfullest wife!
And told her he did not admire—
Go, look somewhere else, he said, Madam Fish,
Some lover to warm with your fire.
Some thought she would quickly depart:
But still she had left, in her bosom, some pride,
And slighted Letitia took heart.
With dollars that long had laid by,
She bought her a ticket and angrily said,
My fortune, I vow, I will try!—
This spinster so humble and poor,
Drew a prize—and a prize that was much to her mind—
Some thousands, at least, we are sure.
To receive—or a Princess implore—
It enabled Letitia (et ceteras allowed)
To ride in a chariot and four!
But went cap-in-hand to her door:
He met her, and said, I have come to atone,
For the love that I slighted before.
When I told you I could not admire;
I only was waiting to be the more blest
When the days of my service expire.—
When I lov'd you, why did you love not?
Your hand should have join'd to my hand on that day,
Should have struck when the iron was hot!
A Dialogue Between a News-Printer And His Cash-Collector
Printer.—Well, sir, and what have you brought me to-day?
Collector.—
I have brought you myself—and that's all I've to say.
P.—
No money, no dollars in specie nor notes
C.—
Not a sixpence, a shilling, to moisten our throats.
P.—
Bless me!—and how do they think that we live?
C.—
They think not of that while the news you will give.
P.—
Did they make no excuses—no promise to pay?
C.—
Some tell me to call next April or May.
P.—
Next April or May!—we shall starve before then,
The devil, I think, has got into some men.
Next April or May!—my subscribers are mad—
Go dun them again, and say, cash must be had!
C.—
Go dun them again!—I have dunn'd till 'm sick;
Six months for my board, I have run upon tick,—
My landlord has growl'd, that I pay not a cent,
And swears I must pay, or he can't pay his rent.
P.—
They have dollars, by dozens, to go to the play,
At balls and assemblies some shine very gay,
But, pay your subscription!—they have not a shilling!
C.—
They have it, I guess, but to pay are unwilling.
P.—
Since the day that old Noah came out of his ark,
I am sorry to say, but am forced to remark,
For some mischief committed, some crime, or some sin,
There ne'er were such times as the times we are in.
The maker of paper has dunn'd me—so, so,—
And his money must have, or to jail I must go.
C.—
The maker of paper!—the landlord is nigh,
And a bailiff attends him—you'll see by and by.
P.—
A Bailiff!—'odzooks, it is time to take care,
As soon would I meet with a wolf or a bear.
C.—
If they do not pay you, you cannot pay me,
Next winter is coming, and sir, do ye see,
I strongly suspect we must both run away.
P.—
I hope not so bad—but before that we run,
Accost them again, with a positive dun,
Be modest and mild when you ask for our dues,
But tell them, no pay, and we give you no news.
The Great Western Canal
Fuit, an recentes carpere undas?
—Horace.
i.e. which was best—to travel through tedious, dreary forests, or to sail on these recent waters?
To equal rights and equal laws,
Is well secured, and well released
From the proud monarchs of the east.
And thus shall rise from pole to pole
Those systems formed on reason's plan
That vindicate the Rights of man.—
And arts fond arms the world embrace;
In works of peace mankind engage,
And close the despot's iron age.
Advancing through the wilderness,
A work, so recently began,
Where Liberty enlightens man:
Her powerful voice, at length, awakes
Imprisoned seas and bounded lakes.
To lead the veins the system through;
Such glorious toils to emulate,
Should be the task of every State.
The unrivalled work would endless seem;
Would millions for the work demand,
And half depopulate the land.
What ages, till the task is done!
Even truth, severe would seem to say,
One hundred years must pass away:—
Still unperformed the mighty plan,
The impeded barque, in durance held,
By hills confined, by rocks repelled.—
Five hundred leagues it towers along,
No China's wall, though stretching far,
With this vast object can compare,
This proud Canal may be enrolled,
Which to our use no tyrant gave
Nor owes its grandeur to one Slave.—
With toil immense, such walls to build,
A new Republic in the west
(A great example to the rest)
Can seas unite, and here will shew
What Freedom's nervous sons can do.
And distant shores those waters hail,
As wafting to Manhattan's coast
The products that new regions boast.
To jealous kings and sister states,
And spread her fame from shore to shore,
Where suns ascend, or billows roar,
Before they bid two oceans meet,
Before the task is finished all,
What rocks must yield, what forests fall?
A work from Nature's chaos won;
By hearts of oak and hands of toil
The Spade inverts the rugged soil
A work, that may remain secure
While suns exist and Moons endure.
O'er many a plain, through many a grove;
Herculean strength disdains the sod
Where tigers ranged or Mohawks trod;
The powers that can the soil subdue
Will see the mighty project through.
Who Erie to the Atlantic join,
To you be every honour paid—
No time shall see your fame decayed:—
Through gloomy groves you traced the plan,
The rude abodes of savage man.
That may for years, for centuries last;
Where Nature toiled to bar the way
You mark'd her steps, but changed her sway.
Conduct such rivers through the land,
Proceed!—and in your bold career
May every Plan as wise appear,
As this, which joins to Hudson's wave
What Nature to St. Lawrence gave.
The Re-opening of the Park Theatre
Once more, kind patrons, here once more we meet:
To wasting flames you saw this dome consigned
Where Reason's feast gave pleasure to the mind.
If wasting flames deprived you of the PLAY,
This night restores what Fortune snatched away,
Improved in all the Drama's votaries prize
Nor rigid reason would, itself, despise.
And our's to find amusement to your taste;
Our's is the hope to merit all you give,
And gain your favor, as by you we live;
Our's be the task, unmoved by smiles or spleen,
To grace each act, and live through every scene.
Events how various mark each following age!
Perhaps this spot, where Thespis takes her stand,
Once held a wigwam in a savage land;
Its surly chief an angry visage bore,
And war and slaughter stained his path with gore;
His boiling veins with poisonous rancor swelled,
Or, where compassion touched, the hand rebelled.
The savage prowled three centuries ago,
Where painted tribes their swarthy mates possessed,
With love's fine flame a stranger to the breast—
Here strolled the native, and his hideous squaw,
And ruled the female with despotic law;—
No right she claimed that guardian Nature gave,
By tyrant custom dwindled to a slave.
Dislodge the Elk or circumvient the Bear
Belonged to Men—to craft and warfare bred,
Through gloomy groves their vagrant tribes they led,
Ere HUDSON'S Galley passed Manhattan's isle,
Or England's sceptre swayed the Indian soil.
And simple Nature, solitary, smiled,
New social manners, peace, and commerce reign,
And pleasures meet, with plenty in their train;
Now spires ascend, and splendid streets appear,
And beauty, female beauty, charms us here;
With every art that human skill designed
To grace the person or exalt the mind.
New Plays, new subjects, justly you require;
For these, on Europe, still our Stage relies,
And Europe, Europe every want supplies,
Why sleeps COLUMBIA'S genius for the stage—
Can not one Bard arise, to glad the age,
Not one be found to abandon flimsey rhymes,
And rise the Shakespeare of our modern times?
A polished people or a barbarous race
With Greece enslaved the Thespian spirit failed,
And Rome's great Drama fell when Goths prevailed.
The wild barbarian spurned the splendid SHEW!
No more the tragic Muse bade nations weep,
No more the comic act lulled care to sleep;
No living scene displayed the painter's art,
No music, with its chorus, thrilled the heart;
No long oblivion seized the enfeebled mind,
And, as the Nation sunk, the Stage declined!
Our failings pardon, and our faults excuse,
Still to improve, shall be our dearest aim,
Since full perfection few may dare to claim—
Arise, young Authors, on COLUMBIA'S soil,
And give us SOMETHING NEW, to cheer our toil,
Thus shall the Muse reanimate the Stage,
And more than Shakespeare glow through every page!
Ancient Rome had many vast amphitheatres and circuses.—These were, for the most part, demolished or dismantled by an immense army of Barbarians, under Alaric, the Gothic General, about the year of Christ 850. One of these was still standing, at least the walls, about a century ago, or which Addison says,
“An Amphitheatre's amazing heightHere strikes the eye with wonder and delight;
Which, on its public days, unpeopled Rome,
And held uncrowded nations in its womb.”
Jersey City
Of rivers, towns and mountains far away;
A city vast and splendid to the view,
Another London, with its follies too.
The land of heroes, that prolific soil,
Where half its harvests from its filth have sprung,
And half its soil is formed of men they hung;
—London, whose commerce through the world extends,
London, who ship-loads of her NOVELS sends;
London, sweet town, where scribbling is a trade.
From the vain Countess to her chamber-maid;
London, a tyrant in the times by-past,
Will fix our manners and our fate at last.
Why should I cancel what I mean to say?
Amidst these tombs I pen my cheerless strain,
A City, rising on the adjacent plain;
Demands a sigh!—in truth, so slow to rise,
To rival York would ask ten centuries.
Between two rivers that confine the land,
In one short hour before I migrate hence,
I write my thoughts, I hope without offence;
I treat the church, the tombs, with due respect,
The priest is absent, and I write unchecked.
They must indulge their wrath, the case is clear;
One truth stands firm, till truth itself shall cease,
All nature's discord makes all nature's peace.
Whether you court the sun, or woo the shade.
Near yon thronged inn the market-folks we see,
Patterns of perfect beauty all agree;
Whether the flush of blooming beauty glows
On Margery's cheek or Knickerbocker's nose,
Still all is beauty, in a hundred ways,
Respect demanding, or commanding praise—
For Plato wrote, and Tully did opine,
Nature is handsome when not quite divine.
When proud Manhattan claims the Hudson, all?
Where Neptune drives his billows to your strand,
So far her charters and her claims extend.
To rise, unrivalled, in commercial weight.
This jealous sister dreads the approaching sail,
Your square-rigg'd vessels, and becalms the gale.
With selfish eye her sons of trade—and LUCK
Claim Holdfast for their favourite dog—my duck;
Look when they will to Jersey, and her town,
The hourly watch-word stuns me—KEEP HER DOWN.
Here slumber some, who once were selfish too,
Here slumber some, whose God was wealth and gold,
Who grasped at worlds, and planets would have sold,
Whose livers swelled to see a neighbor thrive,
And to another's welfare scarce alive.
All scattered, vanished, spent, monopolized;
To heirs as selfish, and as base as they.
And be content with just, but equal gains.
The Hudson should for Jersey City flow,
And aid her commerce, as it prospered you.
Men's oaths are wafer-cakes, mere sullabie,
And Holdfast is the only dog, my duck.”
The City Poet
And we, plain country Bards, eat barley bread.
You carry verses up and down,
You scribble for the stage—
Who would pursue so poor a trade,
Such debts of honor, badly paid
For many a labored prize?
To practice some mechanic art,
Yields something for your pain;
But poems are in no demand,
Few read them, fewer understand
The visions of your brain.
And not depend on Clio's aid—
With all the muse's skill,
With all the drama in his scull
Shakespeare was bred to combing wool,
And Plautus turned a mill.
I cannot recollect but ONE
That throve by writing rhyme—
If Pope from Homer gained rewards,
Remember, statesmen, kings and lords
Were poets, in his time.
Is but a disregarded thing
A second Iliad could he write
His pockets would be very light,
And beggarly his meal.
And prisons have a hundred woes;—
With debts, you have no dues—
You have no thousands in the Bank,
You float upon a rotten plank—
—Go home, and mend your shoes.
Elijah, The New England Emigrant. No. I
The wedded pair began to lookAskance, on father's chimney smoke;
And many a scheme is set afloat
To quit the old paternal spot,
And seek, in places little known,
Both smoke, and smoke-house of their own.
A yankee walked, and many a sigh—
A yankee of an ancient stock,
The pilgrims of the Plymouth Rock;
Then, casting one fond glance on Sue,
He said, “My dear—it will not do!
Has seen two hundred crops of corn:
Here onions throve in seasons past,
But onions will not always last;
Here, barley grew some years ago,
But barley will not always grow.
At least, it grows so poor and lean
I am ashamed it should be seen;
I did my best to make manure
But blights and blasts have made us poor.”
Susannah answered, with a tear,
“Then what, Ei-jah, do we here?
I have to send the hourly dun;
Of all my truck, in yonder dell,
Three pumpkins only prospered well;
That might have brought me—twenty pound,
Of all my dear potatoe patch,
There never yet was seen the match,
When, yesterday, amidst the dew,
To boil with pork, I scratched a few,
A boy that came from Nabby's hut,
Mistook them for the hickory nut.
The matter is as clear as glass
That we must join the beggar class.—
On household stuff that man of law,
The Sheriff, soon will have his paw.
I dread to see provision scant,
The oven cold—the house in want.”
I'll grub the bog, or fall the oak,
Make forests bow, where'er they grow,
And rivers wait, where'er they flow—
In boat, or cart, I take my trick,
And fight the Red-Men—with my stick.
We soon may reach another state.
Of climates we can take our choice—
What say you to the Illinois?
That country felt not Adam's course,
If we may credit Doctor Morse,
Who styles it Plenty's favorite seat,
And paints a paradise complete.
By all that's good, this white-oak chest
May reach Missouri in the west:
Shall travel hard, thro' thick and thin,
With double lock on what's therein,
Among the rest, your wedding gown.
May yet, on Alabama's soil,
In pastures feed, and fields explore,
Such as they never knew before.
I'll pitch my tent, and boil my pot,
Where folks may purchase, steal, or SQUAT.
No doubt have I to see Wabash;
Adown the Mississippi stream,
I'll travel by the power of steam;—
And thus we sail, my Susan dear,
From Baton Rouge to Bayou Pierre—
We go, where plenty decks the plains,
And Summer suns rear sugar canes.
Will you and I, dear girl, retreat,
Where Nature, with a liberal hand,
Displays abundance through the land;
And not, as where by frosts oppressed,
We squeeze—a nothing—from her breast.
SUSANNAH
Elijah, were we each divorced,
And things were at the very worst,
Should deacon Nathan press his suit,
Or Congress men, of more repute;
Had they ten thousands in the Bank,
And moving in the foremost rank—
Were you as crooked as a bow,
Or hump-backed as a buffaloe,
As poor as Job (and all agree
I would reject their suit, with scorn,
And journey with you to Cape Horne.
ELIJAH
And wore a bonnet, made of straw,
Still for the virtues of the mind,
Such Spirit, with discretion joined;
Were I a single man again
I would be headmost in your train;
I would prefer a lass, like you,
To all that princes ever knew—
God help us, if you had a nose
As long as what I might suppose,
Still I would swear from mental charms,
I clasped a Goddess in my arms.
We must consult your father, too;—
To keep ourselves, and bantling, warm,
We rent a corner of his farm.
He once paraded to the west,
And home, again, he came distressed;—
We must discourse him on our plan,
So, off—and see the good old man.
Elijah, The New England Emigrant. No. II
A Deacon of a church hard byWas Susan's father, rough and dry,
Advanced in years, and somewhat deaf
To which a trumpet gave relief.
This father lived a few miles back,
And not remote from Merrimack;
He had a deal of inward light,
With both his chimnies painted white,
And oftentimes his head he shook
At people of a lousy look,
And often made this shrewd remark,
A shabby pilot steers the barque.
And to his name was tacked Esquire,
A title common folks admire.
As one that joined him to the elect,
And one that made him circumspect.—
His name was Hezekiah Salem,
Whose heart and hand did never fail him,
Except, when, once, a whooping pack
Of Choctaw Indians drove him back:
And nearly had his head trepann'd
For settling on unpurchased land—
To him she goes to ask advice,
Gets—and forgets it in a trice.
SUSANNAH
Well, Father, I am on the wing
To say—a—very—serious—thing.
Elijah is quite discontented
With this same lot from you he rented.
He wants to go to Batten-Rugs.
The road is long—how will it do?
And yet I dread to part with you,
Who always were so kind and good,
Supplied me cloathes, provided food.
HEZEKIAH
Speak louder, Girl—it seems to me,
Your voice has lost its usual key.
SUSANNAH
I say, in brief, we talk of late,
And have some thoughts to emigrate,
Where things will wear a better face,
To Batten-Rugs—or some such place!
HEZEKIAH
A place I never heard of yet—
You think to go to Batten-Rugs,
No doubt, to breed and fatten hogs ...
It is a distant place, I think,
And near the Mississippi brink:—
Two thousand miles make far away;
No, Susan, Susan, you must stay.
Elijah must be, surely, mad,
To take such notions in his head.
But, did you know the Indian race,
The people of the wilderness,
The tribes that yet possess the west,
The people of a flinty breast,
With hearts as hard as granite rock,
With sculls as thick as barber's block;
You would remain contented here
Where few or none can give us fear.
With whom in vain the Spirit strives;
A race, whose hands are armed with claws,
And scythes are planted in their jaws.
Here, steady to your native plain.
Remember what the quakers say,
(Whose maxims often come in play,)
That evil to the couple clings
Who slight the day of little things.
And in your brains this proverb toss,
A rolling stone collects no moss.
A farm on Alabama's streams
Might do in Joel Barlow's dreams ...
Such rhyming dealers in romance
See Nature only in a trance.—
If you embrace Elijah's whim,
Your future fortune is with HIM—
So, rather than come snivelling back
You'd better stay at Merrimack—
If you on airy nothings fix,
Still, I'm no fool at sixty-six.
SUSANNAH
On Joel, whom I so respect.
How can you thus decry the page
Of the first poet of the age?
He is an author I admire,
In reading whom I never tire ...
Recall your words—at least explain—
For I must say, and will maintain
That he, who would surpass that bard,
Must travel far, and study hard;
Must view mankind in court and camp,
And often trim the midnight lamp,
Columbus on the stage again.
Elijah is no common man;
He is, at least, six feet of length,
And gifted with Goliah's strength.
Elijah says, the savage pack
Will never make him turn his back.
And, armed with staff of seasoned oak,
No mortal can endure his stroke;
Nor will the boldest chief presume
To seize one feather from his plume
Then what has such a man to fear
From such a herd as Indians are?
In boxing he is dreaded more
Than ever boxer was before;
What prowess can that force resist
Where Death resides on either fist;
Whose powerful clench, if aimed with skill,
Might leave a mark on Bunker's Hill.
HEZEKIAH
He fight the Indians with his stick!
The Indians soon would make him sick.
The Girl is crazed—one Indian yell
Would be to him a funeral bell.
The warrior whoop would stun his ear
And close at once his mad career.
No Susan, Susan you must stay:
Consider, I am old and gray;
Your mother is an ancient dame,
Your aunts, and uncles, much the same,
So, better here partake our rest
Than seek adventures in the west.
The BOOK in which we all believe
Bids woman to her husband cleave.
There is besides, another text,
To which a blessing is annexed—
It is a text that none deny,
It is—increase and multiply.
But, while we here increase our breed,
I fear they will be poor indeed,
And you would fret, and I should frown,
To see them paupers on the town.
HEZEKIAH
The Moon has surely cracked your brain,
That you discourse in such a strain.
Who taught you, hussey, thus to rave?
How many do you mean to have?
You only have Jerusha yet
And he will soon his living get.
But should a dozen to you fall
Still Providence would care for all.
SUSANNAH
To place our hopes on Providence
Is surely right, in common sense;
But, for provision on our shelves
We must depend upon ourselves.
HEZEKIAH
That here you stay and work our land;
Elijah is in no condition
To undertake this crazy mission.
The time must come—is on its way—
When you and he will both be grey,
And Love be but a dull affair.—
Against that hour you may provide
Without this rambling, far and wide.
Then take advice, remain at home,
Nor scheme too much for days to come.
They may be good—they may be bad—
Be you but faithful to your lad,
Industrious, prudent, frugal, neat,
And all your fortune is complete!
Who answered only with her tears;
She tucked her hair behind her comb,
And, sighing, went dejected home.
Elijah, The New England Emigrant. No. III
What Salem said Susannah tells—Elijah frets, and bites his nails—
They both resolve to quit the Lot
Should Salem judge it right or not.
They both agree, and think it best
To try their fortunes in the west;
But, yet, to keep their scheme concealed
'Till they could safely quit the field,
And leave a soil which barely fed,
Or, half the year denied them bread,
And which, when youth and strength were past,
Would leave them mendicants at last.
And what said Father to our notion?
(Elijah said, with some emotion;)
What thinks he of our views, and plan?
Did it not please the old gentleman?
SUSANNAH
Our project did not please his ear:
He said, we only dozed and dreamt,
And treated us with marked contempt,
Our journey is discouraged, all
Our purpose huddled to the wall;
It does not to his liking seem,
He thinks us crazy in the extreme—
He says the Indians will destroy us,
And bears and buffaloes annoy us,
And evils of a hundred kinds
Distract our brains, distress our minds.
Some other plan we must contrive—
In years you are but twenty-five;
Can travel over hill and dale.
Thus He, who toiled on Laban's land,
Took sprightly Rachel by the hand,
And, while the old dotard snored in bed,
With the fair Syrian damsel fled.
With those from Nature's list erased,
Where sighs and tears will nought avail 'em,
Nor cares for Susan or for Salem.
For her advice I would be glad;
But since it cannot, now, be had,
Perhaps the better part would be
With father's counsels to agree;
To live a little scant and bare,
And stay, contented, where we are.
ELIJAH
Give such advice to others, Ma'am.
Let father Salem boil his pot,
I'm careless if it boils or not;
He long has throve, and yet may rise
By ways and means that I despise;
Has made his way by hook and crook,
Nor his own interest once mistook,
But waddled on, through thick and thin,
Where'er he could a bargain win,
By turn and twist, through suits and scandal,
And selling trash by inch of candle—
Let him progress in such a trade—
I was for other uses made.
Will find a storm in every wind,
Will turn, with more than magic power,
A school-boy's wind-mill to a tower;
Bid mole-hills into mountains rise,
And, still opposed to Reason's laws,
To masts and yards change sticks and straws.
We must desert him, and decamp.
Then, trembling asked his baby heart,
If Indians were not in his way,
And where they live, and where they stray?
He faultered, and was faint, do ye see,
So, ere he reached the Chickapee
Was so discouraged, so appalled,
That his good purpose he recalled,
Returned his fortune to bewail,
And starve and die in Boston jail.
Nor will I shrink when all's at stake,
Nor meanly to our hut return
At which a man of spunk would spurn.
SUSANNAH
Two oxen we can call our own:
How long—to you is better known—
These oxen are not counted mean,
Not very plump, nor very lean;
We have a cart—and there it stands,
Made by your own ingenious hands;
There is a mare, not very old.
That, months ago, has safely foaled;
With these we may set out to-morrow,
And leave this land of toil and sorrow,
Where one, to thrive, must cheat and juggle,
And life is one continual struggle.
I am impatient to be gone—
Pray let it be to-morrow's dawn.
Remember, man was born to bear,
And woman, too, must have her share;
(Dear Susan, do not blush and smile,
I'm talking in a decent style.)
Remember Job, the man of Uz,
When sick, and in a constant buzz,
The gale came on that smote his roof,
And put his patience to the proof
(About that period of his life,
The time he quarrelled with his wife,)
When all his household was in tears
And rafters whistling round his ears,
When beams and shingles flew, like hail,
His goods, perhaps, at sheriff's sale;
When all his bairns were gone to pot;
False friends—old Satan—and what not?
By his example, be resigned,
And learn serenity of mind.
Of all the virtues you have nursed,
Believe me, Patience is the first;
So, leave me, without further clatter,
The whole conducting of the matter.
SUSANNAH
Elijah, I am all submission,
But go with you on this condition;
I'll sit where'er we pitch our tent,
Like Patience on a monument,
If you will hear, like other men,
A woman's counsel now and then.
If you to western woods depart
I'll follow on, with all my heart;
The love I bear to Yankee land
I will forget, at your command,
And roam the forest, far and wide,
For tracts that will repay our care,
And pumpkins, to perfection, bear.
Let me enjoy some favorite whim,
And I'll attend you—sink or swim.
ELIJAH
If we but reach the western woods,
Sanduskie's hills, Sanduskie's floods,
My axe shall find employment there
'Till to the sun the fields lie bare,
'Till from the soil such harvests rise
As never yet have met your eyes;
Such harvests from the earth shall grow
As Massachusetts never knew.
For such a jaunt with me prepare,
Nor heed the weather, foul or fair,
I have of money, such a store,
As will ten acres buy, or more,
And, if of more to be possessed,
Let art and cunning get the rest—
Of youth and vigor, such a stock,
As may at toil and hardship mock.
A cabin I can build, and fence
My little farm at small expence;
We Yankees have an active mind,
And all things are to all mankind;
We are for all conditions made,
Contented with the sun or shade,
There you might be supremely blest,
With more than one poor white-oak chest;
And I, as blest as man could wish,
With twice-a-day the venison dish,
Did I possess, on acres ten,
But two domestics—COCK and HEN.
Elijah, The New England Emigrant. No. IV
Now, all things hid from observation,Went on in silent preparation,
And all advanced, with caution due,
Concealed from Salem's wizzard view.
A woman's wits are always bright
When something future is in sight.
Susannah managed so the matter,
Elijah, with a grin, looked at her,
And said—“My dear, my dearest heart,
You act, by far, the slyest part;
We owe to Salem five years' rent,
With interest due at ten per cent.
To pay him off must be my care,
Or I shall be, the Lord knows where.”
Susannah answered, “Never mind,
We'll leave him and his rent behind.”
Both managed so their future mission
That nothing gave the least suspicion,
Both seemed contented with their lot
Though toiling hard for little got.
Susannah kept her wheel in motion,
And went to church with due devotion,
Smiling, she ate the scanty meal,
And ply'd the eternal spinning wheel,
Which, like the globe, from west to east
Revolved, and never was at rest,
Which made Susannah's fingers red,
Chafed by the furrows of the thread,
And little got for all her labor
From cousin, father, friend or neighbor.
And kindly asked them, “How do ye do?”
SUSANNAH
O Father!—well as well can be!
SALEM
The case is just the same with me.
But times are hard, and money scarce,
I say it, both in prose and verse,
Could sing it too, upon a pinch,
But—have you money—tell me, wench.
SUSANNAH
La! Money! Father!—not a cent,
For faster than received it went.
I sold some stockings at the stall,
But little wants consumed it all.
SALEM
And have you laid aside the notion
Of travelling to the western ocean?
Elijah!—did you count the expense?
I thought you, once, a man of sense,
But, if with purse and means so slim,
You persevere in such a whim,
I own 'tis past my comprehension
Your brains should harbor the intention.
I tell you plainly, first and last,
My thoughts are of a different cast,
Debts, due for rent, are serious things,
Landlords have eyes—and you have wings.
People are mad, to ramble far,
Better be steady where you are.
There's neighbor Isaac, and young Joe—
And they would to Kentucky go!
Came back, and sang a different tune.
Some people love to rove and wander
'Till things compel them to knock under.
Some aim to rove the wide world through,
And fix at last at—Tombuctoo.
ELIJAH
We had a notion much the same,
(We all at Independence aim)
But second thoughts put all to rest,
And second thoughts are often best.
Yet, I must own, while worrying here,
And crawling on from year to year,
Of all we owe you for your rent
We cannot pay a single cent.
And therefore, in my humble view,
Some other plan might better do:
And I must honestly confess
I had rather live in the wilderness,
Than thus be dunned, and plagued, and teazed,
And even by friends and cousins squeezed;
And I must say, and you must see
The dogs are happier, far, than we.
Happy the man whose grass who tills,
And drinks at the Sanduskie hills—
Recall the tune you used to play,
Over the hills, and far away!
SALEM
Drink those who will, or those who can—
I would not be that happy man.
Let each his favorite plan pursue—
Neither would I, if I was you—
On Fortune's wheel you have advanced,
To every tune of Fortune danced,
Still in pursuit of wealth and heaven,
Ready to drive, or to be driven
But must confess with tears, at last,
They drove too slow or drove too fast.
And who would trust in such a man,
Who gains by scheming, all he can.
What farmer would confide his stock
Or cattle to Boon Island rock,
Where all that grows is poor indeed,
For all it yields is ocean weed.
On those who quarrel with a straw
You take the vengeance of the law,
On those who, to dispel the spleen,
On Sabbath eve sing, bonny Jean,
You oft impose a heavy fine,
Or take them in the pillory whine;
For heedless youth you lie in wait,
Blue devils from blue laws create,
And all for what?—the love of gain,
Of wealth, that may not long remain.
SALEM
You lecture in a serious style—
Yet, I am patience, all the while,
'Tis true—it cannot be denied,
Satan is on the safer side.
ELIJAH
My toils repaid each closing year,
And half our living mere sour-krout,
Not love of wealth, or love of fame,
Nor all the Loves that you might name,
Not SPEECHES, famed from shore to shore,
Of Congress men on Congress floor,
Not all the wisdom, in debate,
Of Sages, sent from every State,
Not all the wreathes Napoleon gained,
Nor all the realm o'er which he reigned
Ere Austria from his league withdrew,
And Fortune from his standard flew;
Not honors by Virginia done,
To talk with men like Jefferson;
Not Carolina's fields of rice,
Not Florida, that paradise,
Not half Missouri, at my will,
Should tempt me from my Domicil.
'Twas the mere echo of a song.
Addressed to one, who, did he hear,
Would still have turned the deafened ear.—
Salem secure, not overawed,
Grimacing, only—hemmed and hawed.
An Insular Rock, about 500 yards in length, about 4 leagues east of Portland, in the new state of Maine.
To a Young Friend, With Some Maple Sugar
Fond of her country—will my Mary pleaseTo taste her sweets produced from Maple trees:
Which Heaven profusely planted thro' the wild
Indulgent unto man—his favorite child:
Which grace the Western woods—infit for Cane,
That loves exclusively a southern plain.
Exempt from ills their heated climes produce,
In health we gain the sweet nectarean juice:
There—slaves, deprived of all that man holds dear,
Are urged to toil by whips and blows severe.
Here cheerful freemen with their infant train,
Exult in labor, sure of honest gain
Tho' dark the colour yet no stain appears,
No trace of blood, no vestiges of tears.—
For this no seaman seeks a distant land,
And meets with shipwreck on a foreign strand,
Exposed to fevers and tornado's sway,
And pirates dreadful on the wat'ry way:
But safe in waggons, with a joyful heart,
The patient Cater seeks the distant mart.
Let other nymphs their wasteful hours prolong
In midnight dances, music, and in song—
Music and song in ancient times assigned
To praise the benefactors of mankind.
Now, prostituted vile conspire their aid
In injuring the healthful blooming maid.
May'st thou be favored by the Power Divine,
And health, good humor, peace, be ever thine.
The Youth of the Mind
Felt every nerve unstrung,
His eyes bedimmed and deaf his ears,
A sophist made this odd remark,
“If to his eye the world is dark,
“If he is old
“And blood is cold,
“His mind is always young.”
But scarcely could believe,
For men I deem'd of high renown,
Like common men descend the hill,
Subject, like them, to dotage, 'till
In death's repose
Their days they close
And slumber in the Grave.
I call'd upon the sage,
Admired to see, rejoiced to hear,
That all was true the Sophist said:
I saw his frame, his sight decayed,
But in his mind
Did clearly find
Him thirty years of age.
That mind can never die:
The Body yields to nature's law,
But that, which animates the frame,
Forever lives, and is the same,
Whether it stray through empty space,
Whether it has, or has no place,
—'Tis young to all Eternity.
Prologue to Kotzebue's Play
Wit, judgement, genius, joined to adorn the stage;
The new formed scene admiring thousands drew
Its magic charmed them, and the charm was new.
The rugged heart to savage manners chained,
Was by the stage to gentler habits trained;
It glowed, it felt, and passion's milder sway
Calmed the rude bosom in some well wrought PLAY,
The breast, that ne'er had beat with loves refined,
Hence taught, its frozen apathy resigned;
A polished nation rose on virtue's plan,
To prove the stage might form the social man.
As Time's long annals, uncontested show,
How much indebted to those bards we stand,
Whose lamps first blazed, to civilize a land,
Taught man with man to form the social tie,
The first grand link in nature's harmony;—
Blest be their memory, who thus early rose,
And changed to friends whom madness turned to foes.
We ask your favor as we court your smile;
This night, ye manly Patron of the Stage,
May our best efforts your applause engage,
In this fair dome, that boasts your Hero's NAME,
A chief immortal in the roles of fame,
Of your kind favors let us claim our share,
Forget, at reason's feast, your daily care,
To one, deserving of your aid, extend
The hand of friendship, and be proved his friend:
A play we give of sentiment refined,
At once that soothes and meliorates the mind.
Correct with grace, and dignified with ease,
To all who come, fine sentiment impart,
Delight the fancy, and improve the heart;
Proud, if she finds Columbia's sons engage
To rear, protect, and animate the stage,
Still to endure, chaste, noble, and sublime,
The shafts of envy and the blasts of time.
The Military Ground
Of all, who once paraded on these lands,
Yet the rough soil some vestiges retains
Of camps, and crowds, and military bands.
I mark, I trace a spot renowned in fame,
And something, still, may Fancy's pencil claim.
Born, to a world its freedom to restore,
While 'midst a war of rancour and of crimes,
Fell at his feet the shafts of foreign power;
And they, who trod this verge of Hudson's stream,
Won all he wished, with duty, love, esteem.
To draw the picture of a land distressed,
Another Gage should cross the Atlantic main,
Another Navy float on Hudson's breast,
Some new Cornwallis to the charge return,
Burgoyne arrive, and Howe for conquest burn.
And struck with anguish, terror, and despair
The Chiefs who little to their monarch gave
But sky built castles, and the brow of care:
Manhattan's island saw their rise and fall,
To dine on wormwood, and to sup on gall.
Would worlds subdue, if worlds could yet be found,
Bend to one Yoke the myriads of mankind
Debase their tribes, & chain them to the ground:
To such the muse her offerings will disdain,
Nor shall they live in her celestial strain.
This glittering field, when all was mirth and glee,
Their views accomplished, and their fame abroad,
And Patriots, still, though curs'd with Poverty.
Naught are they now—all decomposed to clay,
Or wrecks of men, and hastening to decay.
This scene of Soldiers soon will be concealed,
Where, once, perhaps, they met at yonder tree,
Where, once, no doubt, my friend, like us they smiled
To think that George, the terror of mankind,
Here, to another George a world resign'd.
On the Loss of the Packet Ship Albion. Captain Williams, of New York.
The Albion plough'd her desperate way,
From Southern skies a threatning Gale
Howl'd through her shrouds, and sung dismay;
Though boisterous seas her flands assail'd
No spirit droop'd or efforts fail'd.
The land a lee predicted ills,
Presaging she should see no more
Dear Sandy Hook, or Jersey Hills;
No more Manhattan's isle review,
The port from which at first she flew.
A morning carpet veil'd the sky,
The hovering clouds in mists counceal'd
The reefs so near, and rocks so high.
What, now, was skill? what skill could do,
Was try'd, and strength and vigour too.
“We yet may shun the dangers near,
Where morning dawn shall be displayed,
The gale may break, the heavens may clear;
And then we soon Old England greet,
With wind abaft and flowing sheet!”
The bowlines haul'd, she dash'd away;
Well trim'd, the high black wave she faced
In hopes to gain St. George's sea;
Her well known station to attain,
And ride on Mercey's stream again.
The gallant Albion felt a blast,
That human power or force defies.
And made a wreck of every mast;
With what a shock I grieve to tell,
Her spars were broke, her cordage fell!
“Dear comrades, I command no more!
Our doom is fixed, the swelling tide
Impels our barque to yonder shore,
And there, as none appear to save,
My noble ship must find a grave—
Yes—there with all her costly freight
My gallant Albion meets her fate.
She takes her last tremendous roll,
Our Fortune every hope denies
To shun the reef or clear the shoal:
No help, no friend, no safety nigh,
'Tis our's to yield and ours to die!”
Then shrieks were heard that rent the sky,
And total ruin stalk'd around;
But, soon was hush'd each fearful cry,
When o'er them burst the last high wave
To all, or most, a watery grave!
To a Young Farmer
You leave a mass of WORK behind
Science calls, her call obey,
She gives a polish to the mind,
For there is learned what Euclid taught,
And Plato dreamed, and Newton thought.
To study Greek, or study Dutch;
And yet, the lust, some people shew,
Is the most useful of the two.
Who fought us into Liberty;
And yet, to Linguists be it known,
He knew no language but his own.
Is worth the care to polish well;
But pebbles on the turnpike road,
Tho' polished, none would buy or sell:
To polish such would be no crime,
But surely, truly,—loss of time—
To crust the road is all their end,
Nor farther Nature did intend.
In College Glooms who turns recluse
May know what Grecians termed a TREE,
And what the old Romans called a GOOSE:
With empty sounds he feeds his mind,
And not the knowledge of mankind—
Transcending all that man can know;
The ART that makes the kettle boil,
The art that bids the harvests grow,
The art of arts, that never fails,
That fills the dish, and swells the sails.
The labors of the honored dead,
The shallow brain a pride assumes
That proves, indeed, a vacant head.
The brightest wits are glad to own
They know—how little can be known.
I like them not—away! away!
The soft mattress and beds of down
Should be exchanged for beds of hay,
Where Labor finds a sounder nap
Than Sloth, indulged on pleasure's lap.
May do for students, pale and thin;
But YOU—foredoomed to till the land
With sweat of brow, and many a grin,
Take care your paws are better stuff
And near a-kin to Adam's Buff.
To a Young Person Addicted to the Gaming Table
Is folly in the extreme,
Deceitful as a harlot's smile,
Delusive as a dream:
Ah, let the cards, the dice, alone,
That wealth ensure to few or none.
Eudocia deals, Eudocia plays,
In hopes to knot the marriage band,
And with you pass her halcyon days:
A thousand TRICKS she wears, with ease,
And yet, in every trick, can please.
She must despise your play;
Would rather see you drive a cart
Than first-rate Gambler of the day:—
Esteem that from discernment springs,
And Jack of Clubs, are different things.
“If prudence we possess,
No other Deity we need
To work our happiness”—
And, for a Stoick, he said true,
In Grecian style, in Reason's view
To cheer you when you lose;
The sharper asks your watch in pawn
For what he counts his dues:
They hold you—travelling down the hill!
I heard you fret and brawl:
But they who lose, and they who win,
In truth, are losers all:—
They lose their time, they lose their fame,
And money leaves them—as it came.
You sat in doleful dumps;
And ask your Partner, looking sour,
You asked him, What is Trumps?—
The clock went on, not fast or slow,
But often said, 'Tis time to go!
Is not in Nature's scheme;
Does she her solar orb display
That man may doze and dream,
Exclude the light, for sloth disposed
On beds of down, with windows closed!
Take warning by their fate,
Their minds are soured, their days are few,
And Bailiffs round them wait,
To shew the effects of wasted years,
And fill Eudocia's eyes with tears.
Philosophical Fortitude
Which takes us from this dying world away,
Yet no weak fears of mingling with the dust
Alarm the Virtuous or disturb the Just;
Let systems fail, or systems be restored,
Still, active Virtue meets a due reward.—
Though Vice and Folly dread that debt to pay
Required by Nature on the funeral day,
Yet conscious goodness soars above the clod
And life, well spent, secures the path to God.
Nor think to scan, or mend the grand design.
Ills from ourselves, and not from Nature flow,
And true Religion never leads to woe:
What Nature gives, receive—her laws obey,
If you must die to morrow, live to day:
'Tis ours to improve this life, not ours to know
From whence this meteor comes, or where shall go,
This mind, this spark, that animates our frame,
Directs, impels, and still remains the same.—
As o'er some fen, when heaven is wrapt in night,
An ignus fatuus waves its trembling light;
Now up, now down, the mimic taper plays,
As varying winds affect the trembling blaze;
Soon the light phantom spends its magic store,
Dies into darkness, and is seen no more:
Thus flows our life! but is that life secure?—
Heaven trusts no mortal's fortune in his power,
Nor serve those prayers, importunate, we send,
To alter fate or Providence to mend;
As well in Judgement as in mercy kind,
Heaven hath, for both, the fittest state designed,
Waiting, with sweet reverse, their toils to end;
Quit the vain scene, where few have found or know
The first grand purpose—why we live below.
General Lefevre Denouette
Phenician arts, once more, to bring to view,
Requires a daring, but a patient soul
Inured to dangers and to miseries too;
To meet the worst, with firm enduring mind,
Calm even in death, in fates last shock resigned.
Where pitying crowds could yield her no relief,
With those, to friendship, friends, and country lost,
Lefevre perished on that iron coast,
Where cliffs, tremendous, swept by many a gale,
Mark the rude entrance to thy port, Kinsale.
Paints Life's career with one unmingling shade,
No smiles, no ray of Sunshine through the gloom
Alleviates the pain, or mitigates their doom;
Shade follows shade, to disconcert the man,
And the dark circle ends as it began.
Napoleon's favorite at no distant date;
Such was thy doom!—“inglorious some would say
“Better in dungeons to have pined away,
“Better in arms to find an honored grave
“Than sink, unnoticed, in the briny wave.”
Their cool reflection says a different thing:
When the great author of our life decrees
The final hour, and seals our destinies,
Alike to HIM—they equal honor claim
Who sink in oceans or in fields of fame.
Almost in view of all he held most dear;
With joy returning to a wife adored,
An infant offspring, country, friends, restored,
Just in the hour when all his hopes ran high
Just on the verge of France—fate bade him die!
To meet the man she early loved, once more;
Twice ruthless tempests made the ships a wreck;
And to her native Europe forced her back;
While he, an Exile in our western waste
Her long lost image in his dreams embraced.
In Fancy's visions o'er the watery way:
Her wish'd arrival every toil endeared.
For her he ploughed the soil, the forest cleared;
For her, the solace of his six year's pain,
Whom heaven had doomed him—not to meet again.
And her dear form in Fancy's dreams embraced,
Hope still had beamed upon thy night of gloom;
Exile was better than a watery tomb—
Now every hope, to cheer the mind is fled,
For one is wretched, and the other dead!
On the Civilization of the Western Aboriginal Country
Old hights extinguished, and new hights arise,
Nature, herself, assumes a different face,—
Yet such has been, and such will be the case.
Thus, in the concave of the heavens around,
Old stars have vanished, and new stars been found,
Some stars, worn out, have ceased to shine or burn,
And some, relumed, to their old posts return.
She turns them both, but turns a different way;
What one creates, subsists a year, an hour,
When, by destructions wheel is crushed once more.
No art, no strength this wheel of fate restrains,
While matter, deathless matter, still remains,
Again, perhaps, now modelled, to revive,
Again to perish, and again to live!
Tribes to reform, or have new breeds embraced,
Be but sincere!—the native of the wild
If wrong, is only Nature's ruder child;
The arts you teach, perhaps not ALL amiss,
Are arts destructive of domestic bliss,
The Indian world, on Natures bounty cast,
Heed not the future, nor regard the past.—
They live—and at the evening hour can say,
We claim no more, for we have had one day.
The Indian native, taught the ploughman's art,
Still drives his oxen, with an Indian heart,
Stops when they stop, reclines upon the beam,
While briny sorrows from his eye-lids stream,
That shaded wigwams centuries ago
Must now descend, each venerated bough,
To blaze in fields where nature reign'd till now.
Perfect, perhaps, as viewed by Nature's light:
By Nature's dictates all his views are bent,
No more imperfect than his AUTHOR meant.
In 'forms though varying, still endures the same;
Draws to one point, finds but one central end,
As bodies to one common centre tend.
To change a creed, or speculate in lands,
No matter which—with pain I see YOU go
Where wild Missouri's turbid waters flow,
There to behold, where simple Nature reign'd,
A thousand Vices for one Virtue gained;
Forests destroyed by Helots, and by slaves,
And forests cleared, to breed a race of knaves—
The bare idea clouds the soul with gloom—
Better return, and plough the soil at home.
You act from mere sincerety of heart,
If honor's ardor in the bosom glows
Nor selfish motives on yourselves impose,
Go, and convince the natives of the west
That christian morals are the first and best;
And yet the same that beam'd thro' every age,
Adorn the ancient, or the modern page;
That without which, no social compacts bind,
Nor honor stamps her image on mankind.
And learn from Indians one great Truth you ought,
That, though the world, wherever man exists,
Involved in darkness, or obscured in mists,
The Negro, scorching on Angola's coasts,
Or Tartar, shivering in Siberian frosts;
Take all, through all, through nation, tribe, or clan,
The child of Nature is the better man.
Lines Written at Demarest's Field
One fatal step his prospects blasted all;
In pride of youth he met a death of shame,
While pitying thousands mourn'd his early fall:
War's iron laws condemned him to that doom
That most experience, who such masks assume.
Which all bemoaned, when on the cruel tree,
He saw ambition's madness, saw too late
One step too far, to vanquish Liberty.
Death he despised, and boldly lead the storm,
Nor feared his exit, but abhorred the form.
To work one ruin, and the States subdue:
Had Andre's fortune seen West Point betrayed,
Fort Putnam lost, and Arnold with it, too,
Our young Republics might have scorn'd it all,
Have seized their castle and reclaimed the wall.
Now disinterred, repass the Atlantic deep:
Now pomp and pride a costlier tomb bestows,
Destined with heroes, and with kings to sleep.
Peace to them all—Tappan her charge restores
To moisten British eyes on British shores!
Verses Written on Leaving a Great House Of Much Ceremony, but Little Sincerity, Or Hospitality
Ken by the rigging o't,”
Allan Ramsay.
On business, or for pleasures sake,
Please to observe some folks are there
Who notice every step you take,
Survey your hat, inspect your shoes,
But not omission will excuse.
Almost to thread-bare to the neat,
Yet, in its knap a single spot
Will be observed by all you meet:
And you will be no more caress'd,
But censured as a clown at best.
You dare not fill your craving maw,
Or sure to be the country talk,
The laughing stock of high and low:
Be on your guard at every meal,
And starve to death to be genteel.
The Lordling of this House, who sees,
Must see, with feelings of contempt,
An insect shivering in the breeze,
Such creatures, in a wintry day,
A north-west wind would blow away.
Were Angels not ten years ago:
I knew them in a humble sphere,—
But see, what sudden wealth can do!
It looks at things with other eyes,
And new ideas strangely rise.
I knew them when of manners plain;
When Julia wash'd, and Susan spun,
And pewter plates were scoured by Jane;
When giant Jacob drove the plough
He would not wish to hear of—now.
A lofty house makes mighty men—
How gay these fluttering females seem
That wore a course home-spun—I knew when:
But now!—to please both White & Black,
A man must be—a man of wax.
They almost speak, and look divine;
Madeira laughs at Butter milk,
For twelve at noon at six they dine;
They cheat in periods of a mile,
And folly marks their swelling style.
And why a moment tarry there,
Where glittering Bucks and madam Prims
Disgusted me with Beaurepaire;
A mansion that may suit the vain,
At which I shall not halt again?
He dwells in yonder woods, they say:
His buckwheat meal and venison ham
Once more would cheer me on my way.
I'll seek him, be it far or near,
To find a welcome more sincere.
Verses on an Upper Street Physician
In silent mansions under ground,
Those last abodes to which we go,
No longer sensual joys are found:
No splendid feasts, no flowing bowls
Smile on the megre feast of souls!
Of fame or valor does not boast;
On stormy seas who skulks below
A seaman's duty does not know,
Or, if he knows, he has no heart,
No soul, to act the seaman's part.
Or, can you think retreating right,
When every art should be essayed,
When all your skill should be displayed
To check those fires you might restrain,
That carry death through every vein.
In flower of Youth, and beauty's pride;
No Galen near her couch she found,
No Sydenham, rever'd, renown'd,
No Rush, who once adorned our land,
Prince of the Esculapian band,
But beardless boys, raw from the schools,
And hardly versed in Buchan's rules.
(This scythe of death, this morbid glow,
This giant from the Quarantine)
Who knows but she (regretted maid!)
Had lived, to bless you for your aid:—
The chance is past—she sleeps in peace,
But your remorse shall never cease.
If still, with tears your eyes can gush,
Restrain them not: resume your post,
And strive to sooth Monima's ghost,
Which, now, may haunt your nightly dreams
And cast a gloom on future schemes;—
Like her's, your days may yet be few,
And you may fall by doctors too.
And plague and fevers far away,
When slight complaints attacked her frame
Almost officiously you came;
You felt her pulse, prescribed her cure
And drained her blood, to make it sure:
But when this deadly foe advanced,
You shunn'd her street—and off you danced!
One serious truth we might impart;
With all their lectures, all their rules,
With all the science of their schools,
With all the learning they pursue
Let Fortitude be studied too.
Had fathom'd all the depths of war,
All Caesar's skill, what Marlborough knew,
He travelled the dark circle through:
And all experience could attain,
Had he not been above all fear,
(Contempt of death, his character)
He had not gained his high renown,
Nor all his tactics—won the crown.
Lines to a Lady
Of making presents to the Great:
They send a turkey, or a hen,
To—who might better give them Ten
A splendid present you prepare:
But tell us, madam, where's the man
That will engage to take it there?—
It is a monstrous way to go,
And cash is rather scarce, you know.
And reigns ten thousand miles away,
Has, surely, Carpets of his own,
His subjects weave him every day—
Then, why employ such pains and care
In presents, to be sent so far?
Is but a wild, romantic scheme;
He is a prince above the Law,
His very nod is all supreme;
And presents that an Envoy brings,
He only takes from Brother Kings.
(Not Fortune's favorites, we may swear)
The children of distress and woes,
That ask your pity, claim your care?—
And think no more of Nadir Shah.
It seems to augur ill to Republicanism, to observe so many of our citizens courting familiarity with, and rendering themselves obsequious to Royalists and crowned heads. Thus, not more than a year ago, was seen a Document signed, on the right hand, by Alexander, autocrat or despot of Russia, and on the left by Noah Worcester, a Massachusetts deacon. The good deacon, as a republican, which I am told he is, should have been ashamed to be seen in such company. Numbers of elegant presents are now preparing, it is well ascertained, to be sent to crowned heads in the East Indies and elsewhere. One in particular, it is said, is getting up, with all expedition, for her majesty, the queen of the Sandwich, or O-why-hee islands. If a holy missionary is to attend and conduct each of these munificent gifts, we shall have enough of them. How the funds of the Bible Societies will hold out, is not yet known.
The Passaick Garden
This Garden yields supreme delight;
It is that heaven, from ills exempt,
Of which the ancient Poets dreamt.
For here we see each flower that blows,
And here we scent each fragrant rose
That ever Nature's pencil drew,
With colours, to enchant the view.
When suns behind the hills are laid,
When moons a second light display
And dart the sun's reflected ray,
Who would not through this magic rove,
To enjoy the garden and the grove.
Of scenes we thought forever fled—
This must be Paradise complete,
At least, the muses favorite seat.
Could Adam here return with Eve,
And not a serpent to deceive,
She and her poor deluded swain
Might claim their native walks again.
And here a heavenly river flows:
Dame Nature here is calm and kind,
Nor has one frown that we can find:
Another system all would seem,
And so we think, or so we dream.
An angel of the first degree,
And in her hand she held a book
So full of love and full of wit,
In verse and prose, that she had writ!—
She read aloud, with accent clear,
But few, or none were there to hear,
Her words so gracefully advanced,
So lightly through her Poems danced,
Had but one man of taste been there
To attend the readings of the Fair,
He would have shunn'd the Tavern throng,
And three times kissed her for her song.
And shallops through this garden sailed,
The Rainbows at Passaick falls
(Where Jersey maids sing madrigals,
Or others from that rocky steep
Too lately took the Lover's Leap)
Are tokens, surely, clear and plain,
That River will not flood again.
To pass an age or spend a year,
Not all the wreathes Napoleon gained,
Nor all the realm o'er which he reign'd
Ere Austria from the league withdrew
And Fortune from his standard flew;
Not all the fame of Washington
For empires from Old England won,
Not all Columbia, every state
Should tempt me from this garden gate.
But, dear deception, cheat me not!
What demons cloud this charming spot!
What means that hoarse, discordant roar
Of stragglers, near Passiack's shore?
And there the Jockey—whip and spur—
To much I fear my bliss supreme
Was merely fancy's idle dream—
And now I see a Tavern nigh
That noisy beings occupy.
I see them drunk, I hear them swear,
And now for boxing they prepare,
And now they make their courage known,
And now they grunt and now they groan;
Their tongues are loud, the men are bold,
And mastiffs growl and women scold,
And drunkards reel, and children squall;
So that to take it all in all,
These and some other little harms,
Have robbed my Eden of its charms;—
If this be Paradise complete,
Or even the muses favorite seat,
I sieze my staff, and pray for grace
To find it in—some other place.
Bonaparte
Tempest.
The Bourbon monarch prostrate low,
The powers supreme that put him down
May disregard Napoleon too:
Though guarded by a chosen band
Of chieftains, trained to his command,
Will they prove true, will they prove true?
And to the ground Napoleon cast:
To speak my mind,
She has designed
Some sudden turn in Europe's wheel,
And she may turn it soon!—
Though on a throne, a height so grand,
Upon that height I would not stand
For all below the moon.
And distant wolves, still lowder, howl,
And vultures scream, and tigers roar;
And nations are disgusted more
With regal rank that he assumes;
More rancour boils within the breast,
And more this sudden change detest
Than human wisdom overcomes!
Her memory is a fatal blot
On his renown, on his renown!—
That had relapsed to anarchy,
He swore to guard democracy,
Not hurl it down, not hurl it down!
For mischiefs, then so rashly done!
Now Europe hugs her chains:
Had France remained republican,
And sanctioned there, the Rights OF MAN,
All would have been secure, and free
From tyrants and from tyranny,
That soon may rise again.
A Midnight Storm in the Gulph Stream
On liquid precipices hung,
Around us fierce tornadoes rave,
Beneath us yawn'd a sea-deep grave,
And silenced every tongue.
That bids the winds and waves obey.
Will now appear to sooth the roar
Of nature, in her agony?
Do thunders, rattling through the sky?—
Strange fires the watery wave illume,
That inlet to eternity!
Proclaimed distress, not distant far:
No sail endures these rugged blasts,
Engaged in elemental roar.
What bursting seas, what floods of spray!
Scarce nimble Jack retains his grip
When up the shrouds he gropes his way.
But anxious hearts, and toil severe—
The clanking pumps—incessant rain
Descend, another deluge here!
How weak all human efforts prove!—
He who obeys, and who commands
Must await a mandate from above.
The clouds dispersed, and stars appear;
Before the blast the vapour flies;
The waves subside their awful swell,
The starboard watch hails, All is well!
And from the land again we steer.
To a Lady Remarkably Fond of Sleep
When Libra holds the balanced scales;
But you no fears, no danger know,
Why should I be concern'd for you?—
That on shore might sounder sleep?—
Take your choice of sea or land,
Both are yet at your command;
And, on land, you have your share:
Be the choice as you incline,
Terra Firma shall be mine.
When nothing more is to admire;
Soon we wish the land again,
Nature's variegated scene.
To be in every case resign'd;
Are you truly well prepared,
Never subject to be scared,
When danger there is none at all:
Are you proof against the shocks
Of Greenland ice and Irish rocks?
Take my council not amiss.—
On the vast Atlantic main
Dangers lurk—a ghastly train.
Sons of rapine, sons of thunder;
There (the Yankees all agree)
Swims the Serpent of the sea.
Who might thresh you with his tail
'Till your gay, embroidered dress
Shewed its signal of distress.
Maids, I hope as good as you,
Virgin beauties, always watch'd
Rarely seen and rarely catch'd.
Morpheus shall his opiates shed
Till the seventy sixth degree
Ends a thousand leagues of sea.
May your dreams be satisfied;
Be it clear or be it dreary,
May you sleep till you are weary.
Please good Neptune smooth the seas;
Gentle zephyrs, with your pinions
Waft her o'er his rude dominions.
Dangers seen or dangers hid;
Be we stationed where we will,
Dangers must surround us still.
Dangers less, or dangers more,
Yet have placed on any chart.
Go upon a prudent plan:
To the winds resign your cares,
With you take the churche's prayers,
Then, if dangers should dismay,
Sleep the danger all away.
The Arrival at Indian Sam's (Or, Wee-Quali's) Wigwam
The traveller, after leaving the gaieties and splendor of Beaurepaire, proceeds, one afternoon in quest of Indian Sams residence in the woods.—His reception and Conversation makes the substance and subject of the following lines.
I steered my course for Sam's abode,
But found it not—at last the Sun
Descended to the horizon:
The people said at Beaurepaire
It lay exactly South from there,
Nor so remote from that abode
(Though far from any public road)
That, if I kept an Indian track,
That Indians used for ages back
I would be sure, on that blind way,
To reach him ere the close of day.
O'er run with shrubs and hemlock weed,
My stockings torn, and scratched my face
I soon was in a shocking case;
But thanked my stars, as matters were,
I was not bound for Beaurepaire.
And every glimpse of day was gone,
I looked above and saw the stars,
And glanced at Jupiter and Mars.
My best respects to these I paid,
Thank'd them, but wanted not their aid.
Which sailors, most of all, revere;
The sacred star, which marks the pole,
Round which the neighbouring lanthorns roll;
Which always keeps its wonted steep
Nor hides her glory in the deep:
He shone serene, benign, and clear,
Fix'd in the tail of the little Bear,
Though some have thought, profane and blind,
A nobler place might be assigned.
Like thousands of ungrateful men,
Enjoy'd his help—and taught my horse
To crawl, exact, a southward course.
I saw, far off, a gleam of light,
A will a-wisp, upon the wing,
I fear'd—a some such develish thing:
But, passing through a tuft of trees
Soft murmuring to the midnight breeze,
Conviction strong and stronger grew
That what I sought was now in view.
I look'd behind, and look'd before,
I looked to east and look'd to west,
And north and south—and look'd my best,
In hopes to spy some friendly hand
To black my boots and smooth my band,
To brush my hat, and darn my hose,
And lend some other help—God knows—
But recollected, in a trice,
I need not, now be over nice
While wandering in a forest drear,
A dozen miles from Beaurepaire.
As if to say—“Stand off ... 'tis dark!
None I admit to yonder yard
Till Sam is roused, and on his guard.”
In words of thunder, who comes there?
And come a wondering, leagues and miles;
I come from sops, I come from fools,
I come from folks who eat by rules.—
From those who rise from hopping clods
To be advanced to demi-gods;
I come from ladies, newly made,
From ditchers born that shun a spade,
I come, my friend, from I know where—
I come half-starved, from Beaurepaire!”
Come you for evil or for good—
You come, you say from Beaurepaire!—
Good man, what devil took you there?—
I sell them game, and let me tell you
They never pay me half the value.
They are a lofty minded sett,
Of high designs—but deep in debt—
Come in, come in!—admit him Brave
The man shall eat the best I have,
And that is squirrels killed this day,
And venison roasted my own way.
I am a chief of little fame
We-quallis is my Indian name,
By that I am by most address'd
But Sam's intended for a Jest.
And otter hunting is my sport,
That means my name, of long descent,
Ere white men found this continent.—
Your horses belly shall be stored
With such as Indians can afford;
I am not arm'd with tigers claws,
No scythes are planted in my haws,
And yet your books, your spies, your priests
Report us worse than savage beasts.”
Dry leaves were strewed to make his bed,
And planty, straight, before him placed;
Wild oats were suited to his taste,
Or hunger made him relish well
What Indians neither buy nor sell;
He had been doom'd at Beaurepaire
Camelion-like to feed on air,
And, like his master, lean enough
No doubt, was pleased to scamper off.
A wigwam, free from noise and din;
On rushes slept the madam Squaw
Her pillow shew'd a mat of straw
And three poppooses near her lay
All painted in the Indian way.—
The furniture of this abode
Would hardly make a shoulder load,
But yet enough for such as these
Whom very little serves to please;
It was not rich, and something rare,
But quite unfit for Beaurepaire.
Regaling on his venison ham,
On tables void of table cloth:
He seem'd a warrior and a sage,
And there I could have pass'd an age,
For all was calm, serene and free
The picture of simplicity.
And almost with a heavy heart;
Preparing to resume my way,
He said, “There's nothing, friend, to pay!
I shew you to the Turnpike road
Too near, alas! to this abode:
And; when returning from the town
Manhattan of such high renown,
Be it your first and greatest care
To keep aloof from Beaurepaire;
My heart is good—my face is plain,
You are welcome, friend, to—call again.”
Circumnavigation
Wafts the first Lady round the world,
That, from Columbus to this day,
Was ever known so far to stray.
She is a modern Francis Drake;
Who, with the patience of a Job,
First put a girdle round the Globe.
Good luck!—when first she went on board,
I marked the belt of Irion's sword:
It shone benign—and Noah's Dove
Not augured ill, but boded love.
Ere Iphigenia comes again,
Will not her fine complexion change,
And half imbibe the olive tinge?—
I think she sails as far as you:
Both Tropics have the Franklin seen,
And both have welcomed Iphigene.
Is not the chance of every one;—
To travel round our earthly sphere,
Would madness to that dame appear,
And smile, perhaps, on half she meets,
On Hudson, mostly, takes the air,
And ends her navigation there:
Would teaze the clerks in merchants' stores,
When to the shelves she bids them fly,
For goods, she never meant to buy:
And more it suits her home desire.
Than all the ardent climates known,
Or lamps that warm the torrid zone.
But dreads the mention of Cape Horne,
The Polar ice, barbarian states,
Magellan's clouds, Magellan's streights?
Who, now, upon the watery way,
Views distant isles, and shores, that we
Immured at home, can never see.
And may your Chaplain's prayers prevail,
When he, good creature, at his ease
Demands fair weather and smooth seas.
If now we lose you in the west,
The day may come, when from afar,
You will return, a morning star.
Some sighs of recollection pay—
You will return, and view that Isle,
And rests, repultured in that spot,
Where Parma's Dutchess heeds him not.
And porcelain from the famed Chinese,
And rarest products ever known,
And Monkies, purchased at Ceylon,
That will in every street appear,
And rival half our Dandies here.
Ode on a Remote Perspective View of Princeton College
No mists obscure the day;
So, mounting to this hill of storms,
We take our social way.
Amanda shall partake the Glass
To observe the seniors as they pass,
Who toiling for the first degree
The time is come that sets them free,
Dispersive of the class.
Collects its limpid rills,
And where the infant current roves
Amidst its parent hills,
The Hill of pines exalts its head,
And towering near the River's bed,
Gives many a distant sky-topt view
In coloured heights of misty blue
In wild disorder spread.
We Princeton's summit scan,
And verdent plains which there denote
The energies of man:
By aid of art's Perspective Glass
O'er many a woody vale we pass;
The glass attracts, and brings more near
What first, to naked vision here,
Seem'd a chaotic mass.
The muses favorite seat,
And groves, within whose bowery shade
The Sons of science meet.
In plainly decorated halls—
Those walls engage the Athenian muse
Where Science, still, her course pursues—
Those venerated walls!
That Pile was seen to rear,
And some who preach and some who plead,
First courted Science there—
To meliorate the human soul,
The fiercest passions to control,
Is the great purpose there designed,
Where Merit never failed to find
The diplomatic Roll.
Or cancel half an age
When governed, once, at Nassau Hall
The Caledonian Sage
His words still vibrate on my ear
His precepts, solemn and severe,
Alarmed the vicious, and the base,
To virtue gave the loveliest face
That human-kind can wear.
Attracted by his name,
And some by land, and some afloat,
The eager Students came.
Each swarming hive was on the wing
To taste his deep Pierian spring,
And round the LAMP, that near it hung,
While sense and reason yet were young
They strove to merit fame.
Since, mirthful, there were seen
Diverting on the Green!—
Before Columbia struck the blow
That humbled Britain's legions low;
When Washington was scarcely named,
Nor Independence, yet, proclaimed
To mark her for a foe.
And keen northwesters blew,
Adown the ice on springs of steel
The sprightly Juniors flew:
They left the page of Grecian lore,
Ceased Nature's wonders to explore,
And gliding on the glassy plain,
At Morven's grove they paused—again
Lost vigour to restore.
And days forever fled,
When hymns were sung at early dawn,
And sacred Lectures read!
Still Fancy hears the midnight prayer,
Monitions mild—when, free from care,
When smit with awe, the attentive train
Renounced the world, or owned it vain
With penitential tear.
Who, now, are seen to stray,
Where Stony Brook or Scudder's Mills
Engaged some vacant day?
What favourite Laura trips the lawn,
Enamoured of the classic gown,
Now claims acquaintance with the Muse,
And half avoids, or half pursues
Some Petrarch from the town?
That will for ages flow,
Where other minds plan other schemes
For consequence below!
This tube displays where, with the rest,
On Euclid's page not over blest,
We closed our Books, forgot our cares,
To stray where Rocky Mountain rears
His weather-beaten crest.
Too long our view confines;
We tread with more serene delight
This pleasant Hill of Pines,
Where they, who, near its shaded base,
For years have had their dwelling place,
Contented to retire,
Yet rarely climb its lofty brow
Or leave the axe, or quit the plough
To adore the sacred Spire!
A Transient View of Monticello
The Sage's counsels, or the warrior's sword?
Too plainly wants the artist's aid,
To make it as of old it stood
A hermitage within a wood
But graced with all that might display
The architecture of that day.
To make it last an age or two;
The columns, now, by time defaced
By able hands might be replaced,
But who by friendship, skill, or care
The time worn owner can repair?
'Tis time, almost to shut the door,
To bid a troop of mourners come
To attend the body to the tomb
In earth's cold bosom to inter
The patriot, sage, philosopher,
To witness rites devoutly paid
To him whose memory cannot fade.
Before they drop the closing scene!
(Would heaven admit so bold a prayer
What numbers would not send it there?)
Long be unheard the funeral bell
The last address, the long farewell,
For, when he dies, he merits all
The fame, that men immortal call,
To him no monument it rears,
Or that alone which suits him best,
That generous feeling in the breast,
Familiar, to each worthy mind,
Mis acting well the part assigned.
His summit in a veil of clouds!
Ah while I gaze, the honoured hill
In mists of night grows darker still;
Does this announce approaching fate?—
Prolong, ye powers, his vital date
'Till to the grave he late descends
Where every human prospect ends,
But Reason, Truth, Reflection brings
A new and nobler scene of things.
On Observing a Large Red-streak Apple
In spite of all the winds that blow,
In spite of hail and biting frost,
Suspended here I see you toss'd;
You still retain your wonted hold
Though days are short and nights are cold.
How could you have one wish to stay?
If fate or fancy kept you there
They meant you for a Solitaire.
Were it not better to descend,
Or in the cider mill to end
Than thus to shiver in the storm
And not a leaf to keep you warm—
A moment, then, had buried all,
Nor you have doomed so late a fall.
Uphold you to another spring,
Another race would round you rise
And view the stranger with surprize,
And, peeping from the blossoms say
Away, old dotard, get away!
To dwell, a hermit, on the tree—
Your old companions, all, are gone,
Have dropt, and perished, every one;
You only stay to face the blast,
A sad memento of the past.
I would your bloom of youth repair
I would the wrongs of time restrain
And bring your blossom state again:
And you, though late must perish too.
Ere from the branch I see you drop,
All I can do, all in my power
Will be to watch your parting hour:
When from the branch I see you fall,
A grave we dig a-south the wall.
There you shall sleep 'till from your core,
Of youngsters rises three or four;
These shall salute the coming spring
And Red streaks to perfection bring
When years have brought them to their prime
And they shall have their summers time:
This, this is all you can attain,
And thus, I bid you, live again!
A Fragment of Bion
That such as you may lines commend:
But is that all?—Mere empty fame
Is but an echo of a name.
To write, was my sad destiny,
The worst of trades, we all agree.
Why should I toil upon a page
That soon must vanish from the stage,
Lest in oblivion's dreary gloom,
The immensity of things to come!—
In that abyss I claim no part,
Is mine, indeed!—this beating heart
Must with the mass of atoms rest,
My fancy dead, my fires repress'd.
In two succeeding states to live,
The first, in pain and sorrow pass'd,
In ease, content, and bliss, the last,
I then would rack my anxious brain
With study how that state to gain;
Each day, my toiling mind employ,
In hopes to share the promised joy.
One fleeting life has only given,
'Twere madness, sure, that time to waste
In search of joys I ne'er can taste;
My little is enough for me,
Content with mediocrity:
It never sinks into the heart
How soon from hence we all must part.
What hope can bloom on life's last stage,
When every sense declines with age,
The frost of sixty on my head,
What hope remains?—one debt I pay,
Then mingle with my native clay ...
Answer to a Letter of Despondency
Pain is our lot, and Patience is our praise.
Christmas, they say, will soon be here:
This truth the Almanacs foretold;
Whose sage predictions last—a year.
Your doleful letter came by post,
By which I learn, with much regret,
You are the next thing to a ghost.
Pursuing wealth, to lose repose,
To the bleak winds, from barren sands
I give the story of your woes.
To plainly mark your gloomy page,
That gives your friend to understand
Your time grows short upon our stage.
Still flows for you the mineral spring,
That may in time, though doctors fail,
A renovated system bring.
To feast a while at Pontchartrain,
Each lengthening night, and shortening day
To some give pleasure, others pain.
Have palsies made such rude attacks?
So thin you grow, I almost dream
Wild geese might bring you on their backs.
While torpid nature takes her rest,
Each claims the right—without a crime—
To act the part that suits him best.
To some affords supreme delight;
Others contrive, they best know how,
To spend the day, or cheat the night.
When states decline, or empires fail,
You ask, while chained to Balls-town springs,
What news from Europe by the mail?
Five hundred times in public print;
State news—how Britain's queen is dead,
Divorced from hearts as hard as flint.
And drank his glass with honest Teague,
Has dined, perhaps, at Aberdeen,
And with Scotch lassies held intrigue.
Another race appears of course;
While some regret its tiresome bands
And teaze our statesmen for divorce.
And much, no doubt, against their will;
Others are in a likely way,
Next year, to turn the Treading Mill.
I must transmit a long Gazette;
Your patience and your eyes would fail
To read it half—and half forget.
Forsake the springs while yet you can,
Trod mountain roads, and rough domains,
And be, once more, the active man.
Be off—reject the nauseous draft,
Which many a sinner, many a saint
Have quaff'd, and cursed it while they quaff'd.
Rouse up your spirits—and if here
You choose to meet in Shrewsbury plains
Your friend—stand cyder—and small beer.
Who can their utmost depths explore?
Who views their foam, and does not feel
Constrained their author to adore!
The Friends will give—nor much the worse
If, with what else you bring, they find
A generous heart—and weighty Purse.
To a New-England Poet
And earning fifty cents a week,
Such knowledge, and the income, too,
Should teach you better what to do:
The meanest drudges, kept in pay,
Can pocket fifty cents a day.
Where ALL must on a level stand,
(Excepting people, at their ease,
Who choose the level where they please:)
See Irving gone to Britain's court
To people of another sort,
He will return, with wealth and fame,
While Yankees hardly know your name.
Before a PRINCE I see him stand,
And with the glittering nobles mix,
Forgetting times of seventy-six,
While you with terror meet the frown
Of Bank Directors of the town,
The home-made nobles of our times,
Who hate the bard, and spurn his rhymes.
To England your addresses pay;
And England will reward you well,
When you some pompous story tell
Of British feats, and British arms,
The maids of honor, and their charms.
In England what you write and print,
Will perfectly enchant us all:
It will assume a different face,
And post your name at every place,
From splendid domes of first degree
Where ladies meet, to sip their tea;
From marble halls, where lawyers plead,
Or Congress-men talk loud, indeed,
To huts, where evening clubs appear,
And 'squires resort—to guzzle Beer.
On a Widow Lady (Very Rich and Very Penurious.)
Vilior alga est.
If you have not money, your ancestry and personal virtues are not worth a straw.
Of old, were thought most potent things;
But times are changed, we must allow,
For MONEY is most powerful NOW.
'Tis this that makes the Lecturer read,
'Tis this that makes the Parson preach,
'Tis this that makes the Tutor teach,
'Tis this that bids Physicians study
The anatomy of the human body,
And all their skill exert to cure
The pains and plagues that men endure.
'Tis this that makes the gamester grin,
'Tis this that bids Clodhopper toil
And marl his fields, to improve the soil;
'Tis this that makes the Steam Boat sail
And gives her freightage—many a bale—
'Tis this that bids the cannon roar,
And vomit death from shore to shore,
Gives vigor to the wasting fire
When armies sink and crowds expire—
'Tis this that makes the wheel go round
(Whatever wheel, wherever found)
For this we fell the forest tree,
For this the weaver plies his loom,
For this we scribblers drive the plume.
It gives more brilliancy to fools
Than all the learning of the schools.—
In short, from this, and this alone,
The business of the world goes on—
Without a motive such as this,
The world would be a stagnant mass,
A putrid Lake, whose exhalations
Would poison and extirpate nations.
Yet money cannot all things do—
It cannot make the globe turn round,
It cannot make false doctrine sound,
It cannot make a fool a wit,
It cannot make a clown polite:—
Dame nature's debt it cannot pay,
Nor cold December change to May;
It cannot make a miser rich,
It cannot give a monkey speech:
What can it yet not farther do?
It cannot make me fond of you.
On the Death of Robert Fulton
Rolls near your silent vault, too early grave!
Here, if some artist roves, I see him tread
Respectful near the ashes of the dead:
Here, will he say, beneath this arch, this sod,
Chills the warm heart, changed to the valley's clod,
Here, mouldering into dust, the inventive brain
No more inventive, shall with dust remain;
Here, will he say, while grief his heart devours
Here lies the man who searched through nature's powers
Proved to mankind what active thought can do,
And taught a system useful, great, and NEW.
By powerful impetus of imprisoned steam;
By this the Fulton stems the opposing brine,
Majestic fabric, as of grand design;
By this we see the Paragon advance,
And Neptune's Car flies o'er the long expanse;
The watery world before her prow divides,
She dares all tempests, and subdues all tides.
The Richmond left the river and the bay,
And through fierce tempests forced her rapid way;
No canvas aids her on the billowy waste,
No gales detain her, and no tides arrest.
Time from the unyielding yard may sails release;
When a new race another century hails,
Who knows but Fulton's steam o'er seas prevails!
Who knows but art such proud improvement brings;
Navies may fly without the aid of wings.
In days to come, (perhaps our age, may know,)
Round the vast globe, impelled by steam, they go,
And waft all commerce in the years to come.
To steams vast force old Mississippi bends;
A thousand leagues against his giant force
Vapour propels flotillas on their course;
Through many a grove, by many a savage isle
The incessant wheel drives on the unwieldy pile.
Then, Fulton, rest! thy memory shall survive
While man is grateful, or his offspring live.
And they, who on our Hudson's waters sail,
And dread no mischief from the impending gale,
These, these will say, when passing near your tomb,
The world's great Artist sleeps in yonder gloom!—
The man of thoughts, who sleeps all honored here,
Whose bold designs, on every mind impressed,
An Archimedes is by all confessed.
Perhaps his equal will not soon be seen,
An age at least, nay more, may intervene
Ere one, like Fulton, rises to our view,
And gives at once the USEFUL, GREAT, and NEW.
General De la Fayette On His Expected Visit to America
The muses would their homage pay;
Where yet, with deep regret, they learn,
You pass life's closing day:
Of the great actors on our stage,
Of warrior, patriot, statesman, sage,
How few remain, how few remain!
Among the first, you claim esteem,
The historian's and the poet's theme.
Succeeded by ten thousand more,
Bring on their surge that man from France,
Who, like some hero in romance,
Came here, our early wars to aid,
And here unsheath'd the martial blade.
Then, all was doubtful, all was rage,
And civil discord, at its height,
Lent wings, to speed the fiends of night:
Then was the time to work their shame,
Whom none but Washington could tame.
In prime of youth you measured swords:
At those, who aw'd a trembling world,
Your dart was aim'd, your spear was hurl'd,
Nor ceas'd your ardor, when from high,
The tempest of the times went by:
And greatest, still, when most alone,
Saved thousands from the Lion's jaws,
And lent us when Cornwallis fell,
Assurance firm, that ALL WAS WELL.
Who scour'd the seas and scourg'd the land,
At this late hour, we may renew,
And own with pride, and wonder too,
That such a man, in such dark days,
Soar'd far above all human praise.
Fly, to be where the bravest bleed,
I see him through Virginia chase
The legions of a hostile race,
Who, proudly bent on vast designs,
Sent navys here—to guard their lines!
They found it death to face Fayette;
Where'er they fought where'er they flew,
Their prowess fail'd, their danger grew:—
A traitor's aid they poorly priz'd,
Abhorr'd, detested, and despis'd.
That sees the Marquis on his way;
Some ship, with ev'ry sail unfurl'd,
Parading o'er the watery world;
While lesser barques, in fleets, advance,
To hail her from her briny dance;
When from these shores we shall descry
Columbia's banner, streaming high,
And there in golden letters placed
A NAME, by ages undefaced;—
And here be all his hopes complete:—
May he his native France forget
For the adopted country of fayette.
Stanzas Made at the Interment of a Sailor
We bury one who died at sea:
For fear the Sharks would gnaw his bones,
Our captain lashed the helm a-lee,
And luffing up, Tortuga near,
He thought it right to anchor here.
With Captain Cooke, faced many a gale:
On frozen seas endured all cold,
Where Boreas rends the stiffening sail;
Then ranging, south, a smoother sea,
Why did they name it O-why-hee!
Respect these stones that mark this grave:
Some tribute to his memory pay
Who, now, no longer stems the wave,
But sleeps, where dreams recall no more
His absent friends, or native shore.
Was the first effort of his mind;
In weather foul, in weather fair,
He stood to every chance resigned:—
A sea philosopher they say,
He never cursed one stormy day.
Above his grave we plant an oar,
Whose painted blade from high displays,
This sailor's name—James Barrymore,
Complete in all—hand, reef, and steer.
As some have lived that live no more,
They may the serious tidings give,
That on this distant sun burnt shore,
Rests one, who, manly, brave and free,
Finds home beneath a Tamarind tree.
This humble grave let all revere,
Such as some Commodores may find
When time has ended their career.
O-why-hee—An island in the North Pacific, or great Western Ocean, where the celebrated circumnavigator, Cooke, was slain by the savages in 1779.
Winter
For those whose pleasure is a Summer's day;
Few are the joys which stormy Nature yields
From blasting winds and desolated fields;
Their only pleasure in that season found
When orchards bloom and flowers bedeck the ground.
Has winter nothing to delight the Mind?
No friendly Sun that beams a distant ray,
No Social Moons that light us on our way?—
Yes, there are Joys that may all storms defy,
The chill of Nature, and a frozen Sky.
The noblest beverage of the mildest power.
Happy, with Love, to solace every care,
Happy with sense and wit an hour to share;
These to the mind a thousand pleasures bring
And give to winter's frosts the smiles of spring,
Above all praise pre-eminence they claim
Nor leave a sting behind—remorse and shame.
The Last Poems of Philip Freneau | ||