The Poems of Philip Freneau Volume I Part 8

His temperament was Celtic. He inherited with his French blood a pa.s.sionate love for beauty, a sensuous, dreamy delight in the merely poetic, in the weird and romantic. He had not the Teutonic stability; he was easily exalted, easily depressed; he went often to extremes; he was sensitive to a degree that made criticism a torture, and he was proud beyond all reason. He had been deeply touched by the principles of the Revolution; he had suffered personally at the hands of the enemy; he had followed Paine in his democratic doctrines even to the extremes, and he tried to live consistently with these exalted ideals. His honesty and his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing how greatly these principles must be modified to become of really practical value.

His kindly heart made him a fierce foe to all kinds of tyranny and oppression. He saw sights in the West Indies that made him a bitter opponent of human slavery. Again and again in his poems and prose sketches does he condemn the evil. His message is almost as intense as Whittier's:

"O come the time and haste the day When man shall man no longer crush, When reason shall enforce her sway, Nor these fair regions raise the blush Where still the African complains And mourns his yet unbroken chains."

Not only slavery, but every other form of oppression and wrong received his condemnation. He wrote boldly against intemperance in a day when the use of intoxicating liquors was well-nigh universal and wholly uncriticised; he spoke eloquently on cruelty to animals; and he was one of the earliest to demand equal rights for man and woman.

Freneau's religious inclinations have been sometimes harshly criticised by those of puritanic creed. The school of Dr. Dwight could speak of him only in contempt, yet it is true that the poet was a deeply religious man. His love of freedom and his perfect sincerity affected his creed.

He had an intense dislike for hollow formalism. In his "Jamaica Funeral"

he has pictured a hypocritical priest in colors as vivid almost as Chaucer's. He detested

"The holy man by Bishops holy made."

He loved sincerity, and the creed that came not from dry formalism, but from reason and from an honest heart.

It has often been overlooked by his critics that Freneau was a widely read and thoroughly cultured man; that he was a linguist of more than ordinary powers; and that he knew intimately the chief writings in Latin, Italian, French, and English. He was no ignorant, careless scribbler, tossing into the ephemeral columns of the press hasty rhymes of which he never thought again. He revised and corrected with patient care, and he took a deep interest in the children of his pen, rescuing at one time or another almost every one of them from the oblivion of the newspaper.

VIII.

As to the absolute literary value of Freneau's literary remains, there is room for honest difference of opinion. He is certainly not, if we judge him from what he actually produced, a great poet. But he must in fairness be viewed against the background of his age and his environment. Nature had equipped him as she has equipped few other men.

He had the poet's creative imagination; he had an exquisite sense of the beautiful; and he had a realization of his own poetic endowments that kept him during a long life constantly true to the muse. Scarcely a month went by in all his life, from his early boyhood, that was not marked by poetic composition. Few poets, even in later and more auspicious days, have devoted their lives more a.s.siduously to song.

Freneau was the first to catch what may be called the new poetic impulse in America--the new epic note. Previous to the Revolutionary era, America was dest.i.tute even of the germs of an original literature.

Before she could produce anything really strong and individual, there was necessary some great primal impulse that should stir mightily the whole people; that should strike from their hands the old books and the old models; that should arouse them to a true realization of themselves; and that should clear the atmosphere for a new and broader view of human life. Such new forces are always needed by society, but they stalk with long strides over the centuries.

In pre-Revolutionary America such an upheaval was near at hand. It came with appalling suddenness. The colonists had had no gradual preparation for the idea of separation from England. As late as 1775, Franklin declared before the House of Commons that in all of his journeyings up and down the colonies he had not heard expressed one single wish for complete independence. Even after Concord and Bunker Hill, Freneau, the radical, could write:

"Long may Britannia rule our hearts again, Rule as she ruled in George the Second's reign."

The idea of independence came all in a moment; but once it had come, it went with leaps and bounds to its extreme. Never in all history has a whole people been lifted by such rapid stages into a region of such vast outlook. We can trace the growth of the new spirit, not decade by decade, but month by month: Justice, Freedom, Independence, and then the radiant vision of perfect Liberty and the Rights of Man, and then like a torrent the sense of boundless possibilities and glorious destiny:

"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, But the whole boundless continent is ours."

The soul of man stirred by such ideals, and successful in realizing them beyond all dreams, struggled for utterance. It is such upheavals in human society that make poets and bring outbursts of song and periods in the history of literature. But there was no burst of song in America; instead there followed one of the most pathetic spectacles in all literary history--a people with a vision that transported them into the clouds, yet powerless through environment and early education to trans.m.u.te that vision into song. The South, thrilled by the new spirit, turned it at once into action, and took the leadership in war and statesmanship. New England lifted up her voice, but she could speak only through the medium of old spiritual conceptions and worn-out poetic forms. A young Connecticut parson, thrilled through and through, pours his enthusiasm into an epic of the wars of Joshua done in the heroics of Pope; a brilliant Boston lad would sing of "War and Washington," but he must set it to the tune of Dryden; and a gifted Connecticut satirist, overflowing with the true poetic spirit, is content simply to add new American stanzas to "Hudibras." With all her rhymers and all her inspiration, New England gave forth not a single original note. It was the repeating of the old spectacle of a heavenly anthem sung unto shepherds,--unto those utterly unable to give it utterance.

We see them, however, struggling heroically with the burden. From 1774, when Dwight completed his "Conquest of Canaan," "the first piece of this kind ever attempted in this country," as he observed in his preface, until 1808, which ends the period with Barlow's "Columbiad"--the "Polyolbion" of American poetry--the years are strewn thick with the wrecks of epics. Every poet of the era felt his soul burn with the epic fire. Charles Brockden Brown, when only sixteen, had started no less than three of these Homeric efforts: one on the discovery of America, and one each on the conquests of Mexico and Peru. It was our heroic era, but it yielded almost nothing of value. Mere exaltation availeth little unless it be grounded either upon genius or long-continued culture.

America, however, was not without her genius. Before Dwight and Barlow and Trumbull had written a line, Freneau at Princeton was planning epics American in scene and spirit. He had dreamed, over his Virgil, of a greater Aeneas who had sailed into the pathless West to discover a new world, and to plant there the seeds of a greater than Rome; he had translated with beating heart the words of Seneca:

"The time shall come, when numerous years are past, When ocean shall unloose the bands of things, And an extended region rise at last;

"And Typhis shall disclose the mighty land Far, far away, where none have rov'd before; Nor shall the world's remotest region be Gibraltar's rock, or Thule's savage sh.o.r.e."

"Fired at the theme," he had mapped out the epic of a new world; but his work of this era, like all schoolboy epics, had resulted only in fragments which were to strew his earlier volumes. How strong and original was this youthful dream one can judge from the ringing lines of "Columbus to Ferdinand," "Discovery," and the "Pictures of Columbus,"

which are mere epic fragments. There is an originality and a fire in them utterly new in American poetry. There is poetry of a high order in such a climax as that recording the soliloquy of the dying Columbus, beginning:

"The winds blow high; one other world remains, Once more without a guide I find the way."

But Commencement was at hand. Here was a chance, indeed; here was a theme commensurate with the occasion. The two young dreamers would outline an epic poem; they would essay "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme":

"Now shall the adventurous Muse attempt a theme More new, more n.o.ble, and more flush of fame Than all that went before."

Never was graduating exercise based on broader foundations. The young graduates bewail at every step their limitations of s.p.a.ce. The plan they suggest is the plan of a "Columbiad." They would begin with all the tale of Columbus; they would rehea.r.s.e the story of Cortez and Pizarro; they would discuss at learned length the origin and the characteristics of the Indians; they would tell the story of the early colonies; and would trace the course of settlement and review the progress and the promise of agriculture and commerce; they would peer into the future and mark the time

"When we shall spread Dominion from the North and South and West, Far from the Atlantic to Pacific sh.o.r.es, And shackle half the convex of the main."

But, alas, the time! An epic cannot be condensed into a graduation exercise. Suddenly the poet bursts into true prophetic rapture:

"I see, I see A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities, and men Num'rous as sand upon the ocean sh.o.r.e; Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town Of note: and where the Mississippi stream, By forests shaded now runs weeping on, Nations shall grow and States not less in fame Than Greece and Rome of old: we too shall boast Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings That in the womb of time yet dormant lye Waiting the joyful hour of life and light.

O s.n.a.t.c.h us hence, ye muses! to those days When, through the veil of dark antiquity, Our sons shall hear of us as things remote, That blossom'd in the morn of days, alas!

How could I weep that we were born so soon, In the beginning of more happy times!

It is not a great poem when we measure it by absolute standards, but "The Rising Glory of America" is a very great poem if we view it in connection with the conditions and the environment that produced it.

Full as it is of Latin influence and Commencement day zeal, it is the first real poem that America ever made--the first poem that was impelled hot from a man's soul. It is more than this, it is the first real fruit of a new influence in the world of letters--the first literary product of that mighty force that was to set in motion the American and French Revolutions, with all that they mean in human history.

America should have recognized this new and original voice, and should have encouraged it to sing the new message which it had to proclaim to the world, but she was not yet ready.

How the young dreamer, who had seen life from his earliest years only through the medium of his books, was gradually disillusioned, we have endeavored to show. His first book, put forth in the enthusiasm of inexperience, with his name on the t.i.tle-page, was "d.a.m.ned by all good and judicious judges." So was Wordsworth's; so have been the earliest ventures of every innovator in the field of song. Gradually the young poet awoke to a realization of his position: America was unprepared for her prophet; she would not listen. The discovery disheartened him; his Celtic temperament would not patiently wait for recognition, as did Wordsworth; he was too proud to force his poetry upon an unwilling public. He would leave the scene, for three years to dwell in the dreamy seclusion of the tropic islands.

This was his period of pure invention, where he showed the possibilities of his genius. With the "House of Night" he became one of the earliest pioneers in that dimly-lighted region which was soon to be exploited by Coleridge and Poe. The poem is the first distinctly romantic note heard in America. Moreover, one may search in vain in the English poetry of the early romantic movement for anything that can equal it in strength of conception, in mastery of weird epithet, and in sustained command over the vaguely terrible. The page that recounts the poet's departure from the house of night, quaking with fear,--

"Beneath my feet substantial darkness lay, And screams were heard from the distempered ground,"

his timid look behind him to find the windows of the infernal dome a "flaming h.e.l.l-red," the fearful shrieks of the dying monster within the walls, the "h.e.l.l-red wandering light" that led him to the graves, the sudden peal of the iron bell above him in the darkness, and then the troop of spectres galloping fiercely on Death's horses, while "their busy eyes shot terror to my soul,"--all this is worthy of Poe. As a product of pure imagination, the poem is most remarkable, especially when we view it in connection with the English literature of its day.

In its weird supernaturalism it antic.i.p.ated Scott, and in its unearthly atmosphere it clearly antic.i.p.ated Coleridge.

In the "Jamaica Funeral" the poet outlined his early philosophy of life.

He was fast breaking from the influence of Gray, his early master. It is a Gallic philosophy that he outlines; he is becoming infected with Deism; he is a true baccha.n.a.lian. Is there not a ring of the "Rubaiyat"

in a stanza like this:

"Count all the trees that crown Jamaica's hills, Count all the stars that through the heavens you see, Count every drop that the wide ocean fills, Then count the pleasures Bacchus yields to me?"

Freneau's early dream of a purely poetic career was rudely broken by the sudden clash of war and by the sternly practical nature of the American people. Circ.u.mstances decided for him his career. There was needed a poetic voice to arouse the common people to action. There was no demand for an imaginative creator, for a sensuous singer of love and wine,--America needed a popular voice, one that could be understood by the unlettered, one that with satire and patriotic appeal could arouse and fire the land. Freneau laid aside for a time the harp and the lyre and took up the trumpet and the bagpipes, and of his influence on the stormy period of the Revolution there can be no two opinions. His ballads and satires were scattered far and wide; they were sold in broadsides in every port and city and camp. Even in the war of 1812 his poems flew like leaves everywhere that men were gathered together. To be the lyrist of a righteous revolution, and above all to be the people's poet, is in itself no small distinction.

His poems of the war are in themselves a running history of the struggle, especially of its last years. His heart was in his work; the prison ship had blotted for a time all memories of the old criticisms of his early work, all his early dreams, everything save "the insulting foe" who was making desolate his dear mother land. He lampooned without mercy Clinton, Cornwallis, Carleton, and the royalist printers, Rivington and Gaine. He sang tender lyrics of the patriot dead at Eutaw Springs, who

"Saw their injured Country's woe; The flaming town, the wasted field; Then rushed to meet the insulting foe; They took the spear,--but left the shield."

He sang peans of victory over the downfall at Yorktown; he exalted the fame of Washington; he called down maledictions on the ship that bore the "worthless Arnold" from American sh.o.r.es. These are more than the fleeting voices of a newspaper muse; they are true poems, and they are American to the core. Scott declared that "Eutaw Springs [was] as fine a thing as there is of the kind in the language."

With a few fiery songs he placed himself at the head of the small group of naval lyrists, a position which even to-day he has not wholly lost.

In dash and fire, in ability to catch and reproduce the odors and the atmosphere of the ocean, in enthusiasm and excitement that is contagious and that plunges the reader at once into the heart of the action, and in glowing patriotism that makes the poems national hymns, no American poet has excelled this earliest singer of the American ocean. No true patriot can read without a thrill of pride such songs as "Captain Jones's Invitation" and "The Death of Captain Biddle," a song of the intrepid seaman who from the _Randolph_ poured death into the British ship:

"Tremendous flash! and hark, the ball Drives through old Yarmouth, flames and all,"

and then in a fatal moment was blown up by his own magazine, and "Stanzas on the New Frigate Alliance," the gallant ship "who walks the ocean like its queen," and "Barney's Victory over the General Monk,"

that rollicking song of battle and of triumph, and best of all, perhaps, "The Sailor's Invitation," which is full of the very salt and vigor of the western seas. "The Memorable Victory of Paul Jones," written when America was ringing with the first news of the battle, is one of the glories of American literature. Longfellow or Whittier never wrote a more stirring ballad. It moves with leaps and bounds; it is full of the very spirit of battle.