Philip Frenau, the American Journalist

Philip Frenau, the American Journalist.
American poet, essayist, and editor, known as 
the “poet of the American Revolution.”


Frenau, though fourscore years of stormy life,
Thy pen and sword alike were freely given
To aid the cause of trampled Liberty;
The goddess often dungeon’d, chain’d, and rack’d,
But whom the powers of darkness ne’er could kill, 5
Because she is immortal.
Thou hadst stood
Where shot and shell were falling thick and hail,
And where brave men fell around thee on all hands;
Hadst ’scaped the sabres which cut down thy mates; 10
Escaped the prison-ship, well the Scorpion named,—
And the more dreadful Hunter,* where the sick
Fought with miasma which might kill the strong,
And needed all the kindnesses of life; 15
Escaped the deadening labours of the desk,
Which few who read their papers for the news
E’er seemed to know the journalist endures:
All these thou weather’d like the winds and waves
That urged the vessel onward o’er the main; 20
Weather’d, to die at patriarchal age:
But not at home, upon the downy bed,
With weeping friends kneeling round the couch,
With kind farewells and words of holy prayer;
But when the raging storm, being was abroad 24
O’er prairie and o’er forest; and when thou
Wast seeking that dear home to which again
Thy aged limbs would never more return,
Save as a stiffen’d corse.
The soughing wind
Sang thee a requiem, and the falling snow 30
Form’d thee a death-couch and a winding sheet;
And ’midst the restless storm thou found thy rest,
And passed through raging elements to peace
Such as on earth the brave can never know,—
Whilst wrongs remain to be by them redress’d, 35
Barriers of progress to be cut away,
(Oft at the risk of life or of good name)—
Millennium yet uncome for us are ours.

George Markham Tweddell
Blank verse [in M/S], p. 20
Bury Times, Sept, 1861. Stockton Gazette and Middlesbrough Times,
Oct. 11/61. Derbyshire Courier, June 20/74. Texas Masonic Journal,
March, 1887.
* The unhealthy hospital ship which very much needed a Florence Nightingale.

***********************
Notes by Editor


"Philip Freneau, in full Philip Morin Freneau (born Jan. 2, 1752, New York, N.Y. [U.S.]—died Dec. 18, 1832, Monmouth county, N.J., U.S.), American poet, essayist, and editor, known as the “poet of the American Revolution.”

After graduating from Princeton University in 1771, Freneau taught school and studied for the ministry until the outbreak of the American Revolution, when he began to write vitriolic satire against the British and Tories. Not until his return from two years in the Caribbean islands, where he produced two of his most ambitious poems, “The Beauties of Santa Cruz” and “The House of Night,” did he become an active participant in the war, joining the New Jersey militia in 1778 and sailing through the British blockade as a privateer to the West Indies. Captured and imprisoned by the British in 1780, Freneau wrote in verse bitterly, on his release, The British Prison-Ship (1781).

During the next several years he contributed to the Freeman’s Journal in Philadelphia. Freneau became a sea captain until 1790, when he again entered partisan journalism, ultimately as editor from 1791 to 1793 of the strongly Republican National Gazette in Philadelphia. Freneau alternated quiet periods at sea with periods of active newspaper work, until he retired early in the 19th century to his farm in Monmouth county.

Well schooled in the classics and in the Neoclassical English poetry of the period, Freneau strove for a fresh idiom that would be unmistakably American, but, except in a few poems, he failed to achieve it."
From http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/219544/Philip-Freneau

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38475/38475-h/38475-h.htm
This is a link to Freneau's poetry - called the Father of American Poetry.

"The present age has also been unjust to Freneau. It has left his poems in their first editions, which are now extremely rare and costly; it has scattered his letters and papers to the winds; it has garbled and distorted his life in every book of reference; it has left untold the true story of his career; it has judged him from generalizations that have floated from no one knows where. But time works slowly with her verdicts; true merit in the end is sure to receive its deserts; and Freneau may even yet be given the place that is his."

"FRENEAU, PHILIP. Born in New York City, 1752; died near Monmouth, New Jersey, 1832. The earliest of American poets to display a lyric gift capable of sustained exercise, Philip Freneau left a body of poetic work important for its formative influence upon his immediate successors and notable in itself, when considered from the period which produced it. Freneau's work was chiefly done prior to the Romantic Movement in England, before lyric poetry had received the great impetus and liberation which came with that movement and before poetic form had been released from its classic restraints. There was no poetic school in America, no master to emulate, no atmosphere to stimulate a young poet. Freneau was a pioneer, and one is surprised at the fresh note which still gives a modern touch to some of his lyrics. His personal life was active and adventurous and spanned the great period of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and other events of moment in American history. For several years Freneau followed the sea, making voyages to the West Indies and other ports, often in command of merchant vessels. In 1780 his ship was captured and all on board were taken prisoners. Freneau has recorded the adventure in a poem of four cantos, "The British Prison Ship." After leaving sea life Freneau became a journalist." http://www.poetry-archive.com/f/freneau_philip.html