Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.
By The Indian Burying GroundPhilip Freneau (17521832)
I
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead,
Points out the soul’s eternal sleep.
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares again the joyous feast.
And ven’son, for a journey dress’d,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the finer essence gone.
No fraud upon the dead commit—
Observe the swelling turf, and say,
They do not lie, but here they sit.
On which the curious eye may trace
(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)
The fancies of a ruder race.
Beneath whose far projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest play’d!
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)
And many a barbarous form is seen
To chide the man that lingers there.
In vestments for the chase array’d,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade!
The painted chief, and pointed spear,
And Reason’s self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.