Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Their maledictions, now the burning noon
Maketh his spirit faint. With anxious care
He casteth acorns in the earth, and woos
Sunbeam and rain: he planteth the young shoot,
And props it from the storm; but neither he,
Nor yet his children’s children shall behold
What he hath swept away
Methinks ‘twere well,
Not as a spoiler or a thief, to roam
O’er Nature’s bosom that sweet, gentle nurse
Who loveth us, and spreads a sheltering couch
When our brief task is o’er. On that green mound
Aection’s hand may set the willow-tree,
Or train the cypress, and let none profane
Her pious care.
Oh, Father! grant us grace
In all life’s toils so with a stedfast hand
Evil and good to poise, as not to mark
Our way with wrecks, not when the sands of time
Run low, with saddened eye the past survey,
And mourn the rashness time can ne’er restore
4.6.5 Reading and Review Questions
1. In “To the First Slave Ship,” how does Sigourney engage sympathy for
the nameless blacks held as prisoned freight in the slave ship? What
hope or consolation, if any, does the speaker oer the slaves?
2. In “To the First Slave Ship,” how does Sigourney use personication and
to what eect?
3. In “Indian Names,” how does Sigourney address the cultural appropriation
of Native American “names” for places now part of (white) America?
Why do forests, waterfalls, lakes, and rivers have words to express the
absence of Native Americans in places where they once lived and the
phantom chieftain appearing before the farmer only groan? What’s the
eect of this dierence in terms of communication?
4. How does nature become a symbol for Native American Indians (now
passed away) in “Indian Names?”
5. How does Sigourney characterize, or give character, to trees in “Fallen
Forests?” What is the overall eect of this characterization? How does
Sigourney contrast the relationship that trees have with Americans/
humans as opposed to the relationship that Americans/humans have
with trees? Why?
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