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

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 of poets like Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 and an early anticipation of Romantic poetry

Romantic poetry

Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...

. The poem was first printed on July 6, 1786 in the Columbian Herald.

Themes and critical response

The poem describes a secluded honeysuckle

Honeysuckle

Honeysuckles are arching shrubs or twining vines in the family Caprifoliaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. There are about 180 species of honeysuckle, 100 of which occur in China; Europe, India and North America have only about 20 native species each...

 and makes observations about mortality

Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

. Paul Elmer More

Paul Elmer More

Paul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.-Biography:More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University...

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."

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