The Last Poems of Philip Freneau

Strange to behold, unmingled with surprize,
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.

Two wheels has Nature constantly for play,
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!

Thou, who shalt rove the trackless western wastes
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,

To think the ancient trees, that round him grow,
That shaded wigwams centuries ago
Must now descend, each venerated bough,
To blaze in fields where nature reign'd till now.

Of different mind, he sees not with your sight,
Perfect, perhaps, as viewed by Nature's light:
By Nature's dictates all his views are bent,
No more imperfect than his AUTHOR meant.

All moral virtue, joined in one vast frame,
In 'forms though varying, still endures the same;
Draws to one point, finds but one central end,
As bodies to one common centre tend.

Whether the impulse of the mind commands
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.

But, if devoid of subterfuge, or art,
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.

Go, teach what Reason dictates should be taught,
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.

All of servile conditions among the ancient Athenians were denominated Helots.

University of Virginia Library

On the Civilization of the Western Aboriginal Country