英语1144 顾诗怡 1121008413
Analysis on Philip Freneau's Poems
Philip Freneau can be said as the most preeminent poet during the post-revolutionary period. We regard him as the “Father of American Poetry.” Besides, he also has been called” Poet of the American Revolution”, in that he has written a lot of articles and poems to point out the aggressive behaviors of British.
On the other hand, Freneau has made an unique contribution to the Romanticism literature in America. Consequently, we can treat him as the "Pioneer of the New Romanticism". As we all know , the literary characteristics in this period was that they focused on the imagination and emotion color of literature, praised the nature, and emphasized on the individuals and intuitive perception, which have showed in Freneau’s poems, especially in his renowned nature lyrics The Wild Honey Suckle and The Indian Burying Ground.
It can be said that The Wild Honey Suckle is one of the most famous poems written by Freneau. What he has written is the simple and nature thing-- wild honey suckle. The whole poem can be divided into two parts, the first and second stanzas are the descriptions and the last two ones express the feelings. At the beginning, Freneau used some words like "fair", "honeyed" ,"greet" to create the image of a beautiful flower. Besides, he also used the parallelism , such as "Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow", "Unseen thy little branches greet" to underline that the flower is pretty while it is solitary. It can survive only under the protection of the nature. But the survival isn't permanent, which shows in the second stanza. In the third stanza, he began to revere the nature in that he knew how powerful it is. So in the final stanza, he saw his fate, perhaps human's fate, mirrored in that of flower, that is humans stemmed from nature and one day they will return to it, which Freneau used hyperbole to explain in the sentence" The space between, is but an hour." However, despite the fact that it is destined, we can still use the limited time to do infinite and meaningful things.
Different from the former poem, The Indian Burying Ground emphasizes on the culture. Having read the whole poem, we can get the feeling that ,in Indian culture, death is not a horrible thing, which means the end. Freneau depicted the birds, painted bowl, bow and arrows of dead person to express that as if he was still alive. In addition, he used rich imagination to describe vividly what the dead people will do-- to protect the land as a defender.
In summary, we can see Freneau's poems are full of close observation and on the basis of that he displayed his rich imagination. So that's why although his words are simple, he have created vivid pictures to readers