55
The widow'd dame, less pensive than before,
To sprightly tunes as sprightly did advance,
Her lost Alcander scarce remember'd more;
And thus the funeral ended in a dance.
[158] As far as I can discover, this poem occurs only in the edition of 1786. Freneau seems deliberately to have abandoned it after this edition. A few stanzas from this poem are scattered through the poem entitled "The Sexton's Sermon," q.v. Stanza 43 was inserted after stanza 15 of the later versions of "Santa Cruz."
THE BEAUTIES OF SANTA CRUZ[A][159]
1776
Sweet orange grove, the fairest of the isle,
In thy soft shade luxuriously reclin'd,
Where, round my fragrant bed, the flowrets smile,
In sweet delusions I deceive my mind.
But Melancholy's glooms assail my breast,
For potent nature reigns despotic here;—
A nation ruin'd, and a world oppress'd,
Might rob the boldest Stoic of a tear.
[A] Or St. Croix, a Danish island (in the American Archipelago), commonly, tho' erroneously included in the cluster of the Virgin Islands; belonging to the crown of Denmark.—Freneau's note [Ed. 1809].