Mere cankers of the heart!
And there was another poem of his youth which told a secret of his real character. This was “The Power of Fancy,” an imitation of Milton in its form, but genuinely Freneau’s in its sentiment. The best of his later work is really a compound of these suggestions—poems of fancy composed in retirement. Thus he wrote on “The Indian Burying Ground,” interpreting the fact that
The Indian, when from life releas’d,
Again is seated with his friends
And shares again the joyous feast,
instead of being buried recumbent as white men are. And thus he wrote in “To a Caty-did,” “The Wild Honeysuckle,” and “On a Honey Bee,” little lyrics of nature and natural life, which were almost the first verse written in America based on native subject matter and expressed in simple, direct, and unpretentious form.
Nathaniel Ames, in one of his early almanacs, recorded soberly:
MAY
Now Winters rage abates, now chearful Hours
Awake the Spring, and Spring awakes the Flowers.