Page:Selections from the American poets (IA selectamerpoet00bryarich).pdf/22

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18
Philip Freneau.
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 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 the curious eye may trace(Now wasted half by wearing rains)The fancies of a ruder race.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 there.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 seeThe painted chief and pointed spear,And Reason's self shall bow the kneeTo shadows and delusions here.
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