The Indian Burying Ground
A speaker visiting an Indian burying ground contemplates the meaning behind ritualistic burial rites. He first suggests that the European model of burying the dead in a supine position indicates that death is equivalent to an eternal sleep. This is compared to the burial rites of those in the Indian graveyard who were buried in a seated position which suggests that the afterlife within that culture is more active and representative of the waking world than of perpetual slumber.
To the Memory of the Brave Americans
Freneau was considered The Poet of the Revolution and this poem is representative of that title. It is a simple, but heartfelt and moving elegy to the memory of all those American soldiers killed in the Revolution.
A Political Litany
The litany of the title are pestilences. The poet comes up with sixteen of these pestilences which he then prays to God for deliverance from. Another poem which backs up the claim that he is the Poet of the Revolution as the deliverance would be from pestilences ranging from the institution of slavery to the Royal Court in London.
On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature
Almost a celebration of a pantheistic deity, the God of Nature of the title here is first established as everything one can see around them. The poem ends with a gentle reminder of the poet’s view toward the benevolence of God with the assertion that everything the deity created, He first approved.
The British-Prison Ship
An epic 600-line autobiographical poem that recounts a horrific period in Freneau’s life when he was captured by the British at sea and put aboard a prison on the ocean in the form of the HMS Scorpion. He was later transferred to a floating hospital ship anchored in New York Harbor where he was held for an additional six weeks.
General Gage’s Confession
Freneau was considered one of the foremost satirists of his day and this poem is an excellent example of that form. The poem is purposely structured in heroic couplets to underline the parody of its content: Gage seeking absolution for his sins. Those sins include instigating what would become known as the Boston Massacre as well as delivering the order which sent troops to Lexington which, of course, eventually became the point which ignited the Revolution.
The Power of Fancy
One of many poems by many poets inspired by the 1744 publication of The Pleasures of Imagination by Mark Akenside. A celebration of imagination, fancy is defined by Freneau as a “regent of the mind” capable of taking the reader anywhere the poet desires to send him. Freneau then goes on to prove his point by using the power of fancy to take his reader to into the heavens, to visit shepherds in Greece, to the rocky shores of Norway and elsewhere across the globe.
To Sir Toby
A powerful condemnation of the economic superstructure of slavery in which the title character is a Jamaican sugar planter whose slaves are situated right at the beginning as occupying hell on earth.
The House of Death
An example of Gothic poetry in which a young man has an extended encounter with a personified figure of Death appearing as various forms including a jeering opponent of poetry and a rejection of the blame of the devastation enacted during the Revolution. Effects include wolves howling, menacingly dark structures, conversations of coffins and tombs, and a black chariot.
The Wild Honey Suckle
A very short lyrical poem extolling the honey suckle growing and dying in the wild unnoticed and unseen as the personification of everything beautiful that is overlooked in life and death. The poem ends with the reminder that everything that exists is nature is only distantly removed from the honey suckle but ultimately exactly the same in the immutable truth all must eventually perish. Many critics consider this poem to be not just the pinnacle of Freneau’s achievements as a lyrical poet, but the finest achievement in lyrical poetry written during the Revolutionary Era.
On the Religion of Nature
Another of Freneau’s poems about religion also becomes an example of his polemical nature. The poet makes it quite clear: religion is not necessary to arrive an understanding of the difference between good and evil. The difference is made manifest by nature. The message is that if one follows the teaching that is provided within the natural world, the mediation of religion is revealed to be utterly lacking in necessity.
