PHILIP FRENEAU

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms grow
Unseen thy little branches greet;
No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died

nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came;
If nothing more, you nothing lose,

For when you die, you are the same;
The space between is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

THE INDIAN BURYING GROUND

In 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 are 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 a curious eye may trace (Now wasted half by wearing rains) The fancies of a ruder race.

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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 here.

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.

RICHARD HENRY WILDE

MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE

My life is like the Summer Rose,
That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground- to die!
Yet on the rose's humble bed

The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see
But none shall weep a tear for me!

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My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon's pale ray:
Its hold is frail its date is brief,

Restless and soon to pass away!
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree

But none shall breathe a sigh for me!

My life is like the prints, which feet
Have left on Tampa's desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

All trace will vanish from the sand;
Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea
But none, alas, shall mourn for me!

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE

HOME, SWEET HOME!

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 20 Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home!

25 There's no place like Home! there's no place like Home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain;
O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!