THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND
by: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
- N spite
of all the learned have said,
- I still my old opinion keep;
- The posture that we give the dead
- Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
-
- Not so the ancients of these lands;--
- The Indian, when from life released,
- Again is seated with his friends,
- And shares again the joyous feast.
-
- His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
- And venison, for a journey dressed,
- Bespeak the nature of the soul,
- Activity, that wants no rest.
-
- His bow for action ready bent,
- And arrows with a head of stone,
- Can only mean that life is spent,
- And not the old ideas gone.
-
- Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
- No fraud upon the dead commit,--
- Observe the swelling turf, and say,
- They do not lie, but here they sit.
-
- Here still a lofty rock remains,
- On which the curious eye may trace
- (Now wasted half by wearing rains)
- The fancies of a ruder race.
-
- Here still an aged elm aspires,
- Beneath whose far projecting shade
- (And which the shepherd still admires)
- The children of the forest played.
-
- There oft a restless Indian queen
- (Pale Shebah with her braided hair),
- And many a barbarous form is seen
- To chide the man that lingers there.
-
- By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
- In habit for the chase arrayed,
- The hunter still the deer pursues,
- The hunter and the deer -- a shade!
-
- And long shall timorous Fancy see
- The painted chief, and pointed spear,
- And Reason's self shall bow the knee
- To shadows and delusions here.
"The Indian Burying Ground"
is reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900.
Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915. |
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POEMS BY PHILIP FRENEAU |
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