I love thy church, O God!
Her walls before thee stand,
Dear as the apple of thine eye,
And graven on thy hand.

If e'er to bless thy sons,
My voice, or hands, deny,
These hands let useful skill forsake,
This voice in silence die.

If e'er my heart forget
Her welfare or her woe,
Let every joy this heart forsake,
And every grief o'erflow.

For her my tears shall fall;
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be given,
Till toils and cares shall end.

Beyond my highest joy

I prize her heavenly ways,
Her sweet communion, solemn vows,
Her hymns of love and praise.

Jesus, thou Friend divine,

Our Saviour and our King,

Thy hand from every snare and foe,
Shall great deliverance bring.

Sure as thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given

The brightest glories earth can yield,

And brighter bliss of heaven.

PHILIP FRENEAU, 1752-1832.

PHILIP FRENEAU was a celebrated poet in the period of the American Revolution, most of his pieces having been written between the years 1768 and 1793. He was of French extraction, his grandfather having come to this country soon after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz, 1598. He was born in New York, January 2, 1752, and after the usual preparatory studies, in which he distinguished himself, he entered Princeton College, New Jersey, and graduated there in 1771, at the age of nineteen. After leaving college, he went to Philadelphia, with an intention of studying the law; but he soon abandoned this, and led an aimless life for two or three years. In 1774 and 1775, we find him in New York, where he began to publish those pieces of political satire and burlesque which made his name at that time familiar and popular throughout the country. After this, for two or three years he was travelling in the West Indies. In April, 1781, appeared in Philadelphia the first number of the Freeman's Journal, which he edited for three or four years. The first edition of his poems was published in Philadelphia in 1786, entitled The Poems of Philip Freneau, written chiefly during the Late War. In

1788, appeared The Miscellaneous Works of Philip Freneau, containing his Essays and Additional Poems, in two volumes, published by Francis Bailey.

In the fall of 1790, the Government was removed to Philadelphia, and on the 31st of October of the next year appeared the first number of the National Gazette, edited by Freneau, which was continued to October 26, 1793, and in which were given the first examples of that partisan abuse which has ever since been the shame of American politics.1 After the suspension of the Gazette, he published, in 1795, The Jersey Chronicle, at Mount Pleasant, which continued but a year. He then was engaged for many years in various voyages to Savannah, the West Indies, Madeira, &c., and in 1809 again settled in Philadelphia. During the second war with Great Britain he wrote numerous songs and ballads, and in 1815 published A Collection of Poems on American Affairs and a Variety of other Subjects, chiefly Moral and Political, written between 1795 and 1815. In his old age he resided in New Jersey, and died near Freehold, on the 18th of December, 1832.

Freneau was undoubtedly a man of genius, and a very ready and versatile writer; and some of his early pieces of poetry, written when he was ambitious of literary distinction, are richly worthy of preservation. But most that he wrote was of an ephemeral character, strongly tinctured with partisan prejudices and vituperation, and has met with its deserved reward,―oblivion.

THE DYING INDIAN.2

"On yonder lake I spread the sail no more!
Vigor, and youth, and active days are past;
Relentless demons urge me to that shore
On whose black forests all the dead are cast;
Ye solemn train, prepare the funeral song,
For I must go to shades below,

Where all is strange, and all is new;
Companion to the airy throng!

What solitary streams,

In dull and dreary dreams,

All melancholy, must I rove along!

"In it Mr. Jefferson was continually referred to with expressions of fulsome adulation, and the public and private characters of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Knox, and their associates, were vilified with unfaltering industry and malignity. The Rev. Dr. Dwight thus wrote at that time to Oliver Wolcott, then in Congress at Philadelphia:The late impertinent attacks on the Chief Magistrate are viewed with a general and marked indignation. Freneau, your printer, linguist, and so forth, is regarded here as a mere incendiary, or rather as a despicable tool of bigger incendiaries, and his paper as a public nuisance.' That the National Gazette' was entirely under Mr. Jefferson's control appears never to have been doubted. Freneau said, years after, to Dr. Francis, (of New York,) who became his physician, that it was among his greatest griefs that he had seemed to be an enemy to Washington, but that Mr. Jefferson had written or dictated whatever in the Gazette' was reproachful or calumnious of that exalted character."-Griswold's Republican Court, p. 288. But in this case the Latin adage is especially applicable,-Quid facit per alium, facit per se.

Tomo-Chequi.

To what strange lands must Chequi take his way!
Groves of the dead departed mortals trace;
No deer along those gloomy forests stray,
No huntsmen there take pleasure in the chase,
But all are empty, unsubstantial shades,
That ramble through those visionary glades;
No spongy fruits from verdant trees depend,
But sickly orchards there

Do fruits as sickly bear,

And apples a consumptive visage show,
And wither'd hangs the hurtleberry blue.

Ah me! what mischiefs on the dead attend!
Wandering a stranger to the shores below,
Where shall I brook or real fountain find?
Lazy and sad deluding waters flow:
Such is the picture in my boding mind!
Fine tales, indeed, they tell
Of shades and purling rills,
Where our dead fathers dwell
Beyond the western hills;

But when did ghost return his state to show,
Or who can promise half the tale is true?

I, too, must be a fleeting ghost! no more;
None, none but shadows to those mansions go;
I leave my woods, I leave the Huron shore,
For emptier groves below!

Ye charming solitudes,

Ye tall ascending woods,

Ye glassy lakes and prattling streams,

Whose aspect still was sweet,

Whether the sun did greet,

Or the pale moon embraced you with her beams-
Adieu to all!

To all that charm'd me where I stray'd,

The winding stream, the dark sequester'd shade:

Adieu all triumphs here!

Adieu, the mountain's lofty swell,

Adieu, thou little verdant hill,

And seas, and stars, and skies,-farewell,

For some remoter sphere!

Perplex'd with doubts, and tortured with despair,

Why so dejected at this hopeless sleep?

Nature at last these ruins may repair,

When fate's long dream is o'er, and she forgets to weep;

Some real world once more may be assign'd,

Some new-born mansion for the immortal mind!

Farewell, sweet lake! farewell, surrounding woods!

To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray,

Beyond the mountains, and beyond the floods,

Beyond the Huron Bay!

Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low,
My trusty bow and arrows by my side,

The cheerful bottle and the venison store;
For long the journey is that I must go,
Without a partner, and without a guide."

He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep,
Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep!

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE.

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch'd thy honey'd blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white array'd,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died, nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,

For when you die you are the same;
The space between is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

THE PROSPECT OF PEACE.

Though clad in winter's gloomy dress1
All Nature's works appear,
Yet other prospects rise to bless
The new returning year:

The active sail again is seen,

To greet our western shore;

Gay plenty smiles, with brow serene,

And wars distract no more.

No more the vales, no more the plains,

An iron harvest yield;

Peace guards our doors, impels our swains
To till the grateful field:

1 The winter of 1814-15.

From distant climes, no longer foes,
(Their years of misery past,)
Nations arrive, to find repose
In these domains at last.

And, if a more delightful scene
Attracts the mortal eye,

Where clouds nor darkness intervene,
Behold, aspiring high,

On freedom's soil those fabrics plann'd,
On virtue's basis laid,

That make secure our native land,
And prove our toils repaid.

Ambitious aims and pride severe,

Would you at distance keep,
What wanderer would not tarry here,
Here charm his cares to sleep?
Oh, still may health her balmy wings
O'er these fair fields expand,

While commerce from all climates brings
The products of each land.

Through toiling care and lengthen'd views,
That share alike our span,

Gay, smiling hope her heaven pursues,
The eternal friend of man:

The darkness of the days to come
She brightens with her ray,
And smiles o'er Nature's gaping tomb,
When sickening to decay!