To yon bright borders of Atlantic day

Thy swelling pinions led the trackless way,
And taught mankind such useful deeds to dare,
To trace new seas and happy nations rear;
Till by fraternal hands their sails unfurl'd
Have waved at last in union o'er the world.
Then let thy steadfast soul no more complain
Of dangers braved and griefs endured in vain,
Of courts insidious, envy's poison'd stings,
The loss of empire and the frown of kings,
While these broad views thy better thoughts compose
To spurn the malice of insulting foes,
And all the joys descending ages gain
Repay thy labors and remove thy pain."

PHILIP FRENEAU

Philip Freneau was the first American to show a genuine poetic call and gift. Lyrics like The Wild Honeysuckle are traces indicating what in less troubled times he might have accomplished in pure poetry. His most characteristic poems, however, embody the revolutionary spirit and ideas; and he has been properly styled the "Poet of the Revolution." The trait which best interprets his poetry is his passion for human freedom. This he perhaps inherited from his Huguenot ancestry; his grandfather came to America to secure liberty of thought. The French Protestants, however, were less austere and puritanical than those of New England; and the poet, as Professor Pattee believes, "inherited with his French blood a passionate love of beauty." Freneau was born into a home of culture and refinement in New York in 1752. When he entered Princeton in 1768 he had already read much and had written poetry; and he continued to write while in college. He was a classmate of James Madison and Hugh Brackenridge; with the latter he formed a literary friendship recalling the contemporary one of the "Yale Poets," satirized the tories, and composed a commencement poem entitled The Rising Glory of America.

After graduation he taught in a school conducted by Brackenridge in Maryland. At the end of three years, during which his movements have not been traced, he appeared in New York in 1775 as a Revolutionary satirist, publishing some eight poetical pamphlets, mainly in the heroic couplet, of which A Political Litany and The Midnight Consultations are typical. Strangely he now withdrew from the Revolutionary conflict, in which he must have been intensely interested, and spent the next three years in the West Indies. This experience probably developed his imagination, and it furnished material for two remarkable poems, Santa Cruz

and The House of Night, published after his return (in 1778) in Brackenridge's excellent but short-lived United States Magazine. In 1780 Freneau was passenger on a ship taken by the British; his six weeks' experience as a captive is described with passionate bitterness in The British Prison Ship. For three years, 1781-1784, he was in Philadelphia as editor of The Freeman's Journal, writing for this paper some of his best poems-The Victory of Paul Jones, To the Memory of the Brave Americans, and The Wild Honeysuckle.

Freneau spent much of his life on salt water; from 1784 to 1790 he was active in the coasting trade; and he made use of this experience in poetry. It was he, rather than Scott or Cooper, says his biographer, "who added the domain of the ocean to literature.” Collections of his Poems were published in 1786 and 1788; these with the edition of 1795 contain his best poetry. From 1790, when he left the sea and married, to 1797, Freneau was mainly engaged in newspaper work. His poems of this time are full of enthusiasm for the revolution in France, which he regarded as a continuation of the great movement begun in America. In 1791 he went to Philadelphia to accept from Jefferson the clerkship for foreign languages in the State Department, and to edit The National Gazette, a paper strongly Republican and pro-French, in which he attacked the Federalists in Washington's administration. As he spared Jefferson he was accused of collusion, and of "biting the hand that put bread in his mouth." Careful investigation seems to show that he was guilty of nothing worse than violent partisan feeling. In the popular revulsion against Genet in 1793 he had to give up the Gazette. This episode, famous in history, has also some critical importance. To Washington he was "that rascal, Freneau;" in Federalist New England, according to Timothy Dwight, he was regarded as "a mere incendiary;" and since literary biography and criticism were long mainly in the hands of New Englanders, he lost accordingly in poetical reputation. As during his life he often subordinated poetry to patriotism, so afterward he suffered as a poet for his political sincerity, outspokenness, and courage. He lived on to show in the conflict with England leading to

the War of 1812 that he had not changed his principles; and he closed his long and chequered career in 1832.

Throughout Freneau wrote verse indefatigably. His poems have been collected and admirably edited for the Princeton Historical Association by Professor F. L. Pattee (1902-1907). Even in the three volumes of this edition. many poems are omitted. Of the hundreds included many are more interesting to the historian than to the student of poetry; only a few have genuine poetic merit, and none is flawless. The best, however,-selected for the following pages-show that after his period of imitation and apprenticeship, Freneau wrote with originality, often with imagination; that he broke away from the conventionality of the eighteenth century and even in his couplets employed a diction simple and sincere; that whatever his theme he wrote from his own ideas and experience; that he treated American nature truthfully and sympathetically. They show that he was our first authentic poet; that, unaided and under adverse conditions, he introduced a new poetic era; even that, in some interesting respects, he anticipated the "romantic" poets-Wordsworth and Coleridge, Bryant and Poe-of the next generation.

The following poems are reprinted from The Poems of Philip Freneau, edited by Professor F. L. Pattee, with the permission of the Princeton University Library.

A POLITICAL LITANY

Libera Nos, Domine.-Deliver us, O Lord, not only from British dependence, but also

From a junto that labor with absolute power,

Whose schemes disappointed have made them look sour, From the lords of the council, who fight against freedom, Who still follow on where delusion shall lead them.

From the group at St. James's, who slight our petitions,
And fools that are waiting for further submissions—
From a nation whose manners are rough and severe,
From scoundrels and rascals,-do keep us all clear.

From pirates sent out by command of the king
To murder and plunder, but never to swing.
From Wallace and Greaves, and Vipers and Roses,1
Whom, if heaven pleases, we'll give bloody noses.

1

From the valiant Dunmore, with his crew of banditti,
Who plunder Virginians at Williamsburg city,
From hot-headed Montague, mighty to swear,
The little fat man with his pretty white hair.

From bishops in Britain, who butchers are grown,
From slaves that would die for a smile from the throne,
From assemblies that vote against Congress proceedings,
(Who now see the fruit of their stupid misleadings.)

From Tryon the mighty, who flies from our city,
And swelled with importance disdains the committee:
(But since he is pleased to proclaim us his foes,
What the devil care we where the devil he goes.)

From the caitiff, Lord North, who would bind us in chains,
From a royal king Log, with his tooth-full of brains,
Who dreams, and is certain (when taking a nap)
He has conquered our lands, as they lay on his map.

From a kingdom that bullies, and hectors, and swears,
We send up to heaven our wishes and prayers

That we, disunited, may freemen be still,

And Britain go on-to be damned if she will.

1 Captains and ships in the British navy, then employed on the American coast.