Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Epistle to a Gay Young Lady Who Was Married to a Doating Old Deacon

Philip Freneau (1752–1832)

THUS winter joins to April’s bloom,

Thus daisies blush beside a tomb,

Thus, fields of ice o’er rivers grow,

While melting streams are found below.

How strange a taste is here display’d—

Yourself all light, and he all shade!

Each hour you live you look more gay,

While he grows uglier every day!

Intent upon celestial things,

He only Watts or Sternhold sings;—

You tune your chord to different strains,

And merrier notes attract the swains.

Ah Harriot! why in beauty’s prime

Thus look for flowers in Greenland’s clime;

When twenty years are scarcely run

Thus hope for spring without a sun!