but Freneau's satiric verse is not his best, however important it may be to historians.
His best poems are a few short lyrics, remarkable for their simplicity, sincerity, and love of nature. His lines:—
"A hermit's house beside a stream
With forests planted round,"
are suggestive of the romantic school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is also The Wild Honeysuckle, which begins as follows:—
"Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet.
"By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by."
Although Freneau's best poems are few and short, no preceding American poet had equaled them. The following will repay careful reading: The Wild Honeysuckle, The Indian Burying Ground, and To a Honey Bee.
He died in 1832, and was buried near his home at Mount Pleasant, Monmouth
County, New Jersey.
ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD
The great prose representatives of the first half of the eighteenth century, Swift, Addison, Steele, and Defoe, had passed away before the middle of the century. The creators of the novel, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding, had done their best work by 1750.