The Indian Burying Ground
The Indian Burying Ground
Original Text
The Poems of Philip Freneau, ed. Fred Lewis Pattee, II (New Jersey, 1902) : 369-70. PS 755 AZ University of Toronto at Mississauga
1 In spite of all the learned have said,
2 I still my old opinion keep;
3 The posture, that we give the dead,
4 Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
5 Not so the ancients of these lands --
6 The Indian, when from life released,
7 Again is seated with his friends,
8 And shares again the joyous feast.
9 His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
10 And venison, for a journey dressed,
11 Bespeak the nature of the soul,
12 Activity, that knows no rest.
13 His bow, for action ready bent,
14 And arrows, with a head of stone,
15 Can only mean that life is spent,
16 And not the old ideas gone.
17 Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
18 No fraud upon the dead commit --
19 Observe the swelling turf, and say
20 They do not lie, but here they sit.
21 Here still a lofty rock remains,
22 On which the curious eye may trace
23 (Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)
24 The fancies of a ruder race.
25 Here still an aged elm aspires,
26 Beneath whose far-projecting shade
27 (And which the shepherd still admires)
28 The children of the forest played!
29 There oft a restless Indian queen
30 (Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)
31 And many a barbarous form is seen
32 To chide the man that lingers there.
33 By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews;
34 In habit for the chase arrayed,
35 The hunter still the deer pursues,
36 The hunter and the deer, a shade!
37 And long shall timorous fancy see
38 The painted chief, and pointed spear,
39 And Reason's self shall bow the knee
40 To shadows and delusions here.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004
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