Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[36] (1786) saw also those of the first true American poet, Philip Freneau, who, if he left a humbler name than Burns, as befitted a colonist, at least dictated a line of poetry to each of two leading English poets. It has been said that there was no book published in America before 1800 which has now a sure place in general literature. But Freneau before that date gave two lines to general literature which in a manner saved his time, although the lines bore to the general public the names of Scott and Campbell, who respectively borrowed them.

The first is found in Freneau's Indian Burying-ground, the last image of that fine visionary stanza:--

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In vestments for the chase array'd,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer-a shade.

Campbell has given this line a rich setting in O'Connor's child:--

Now on the grass-green turf he sits,
His tassell'd horn beside him laid;
Now o'er the hills in chase he flits,
The hunter and the deer a shade.