The Wild Honey Suckle

The Wild Honey Suckle is a 1786 poem by American author Philip Freneau. Its style and tone is often considered a reaction to the neoclassicism of poets like Alexander Pope and an early anticipation of Romantic poetry.^[1] The poem was first printed on July 6, 1786 in the Columbian Herald.^[2]

Themes and critical response

The poem describes a secluded honeysuckle and makes observations about mortality. Paul Elmer More praised the "unearthly loveliness" of Freneau's "The Wild Honey Suckle" but noted that "even a clever journeyman's hand could alter a word here and there for the better."^[3]

References

1. V. E. Gibbens (1944). A Note on Three Lyrics of Philip Freneau. Modern Language Notes, Vol. 59, No. 5 (May, 1944), pp. 313-315.
2. Hiltner, Judith R. (1986). The Newspaper Verse of Philip Freneau: An Edition and Bibliographic Survey. Whitston Pub. Co. Inc. ISBN 978-0-87875-248-5
3. Arner Rovert D. (1074). Neoclassicism and Romanticism: A Reading of Freneau's" The Wild Honey Suckle" Early American Literature Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring, 1974, pp. 53-61.

External links

• The Wild Honey Suckle in Poems written and published during the American revolutionary war, and now republished from the original manuscripts by Philip Morin Freneau