And fell ere he could reach his shrieking mother;
Who felt in turn her reeking scalp clutched off
Her burning head! What wonder black revenge
Looked from the heavens: the forests echoed it
In the wild storm! The winter snows were piled
High with its curses, and e'en green-garbed spring,
That brought her birds, her flowers, and grass and light
To the cursed white men, howled revenge to them.
But naught could daunt the white man's energy:
The valleys smiled with culture; mountain-sides
Grew green with pastures, and their soaring tops
E'en bore rough clearings: by the trapper's streams,
Rose roofs; and rivers, like the winter woods,
Were flaked with sails. Life, active, prosperous life,
Ran through the woods and mantled o'er the land.
As the tree fell, the log-hut sprang in place;
The log-hut, like the tent in fairy tale,
Expanded to the village-like the wand
Of the enchanter, budding, sprouting forth;
Or like the gourd mysterious of the prophet,
The village spread, in turn, into a city.
108. THE SIX NATIONS, OR IROQUOIS.
PROUD and majestic was that native race,
The Iroquois ! once masters of our State.
Leagued into one great union, five wild tribes
Towered o'er the boundless forest of their home,
Conquerors of all the tawny races dwelling
Where dwell the swarming thousands of our Union :
Thus lifting their plumed foreheads to the clouds,
And stretching their keen tomahawk and knife
From where St. Lawrence its tremendous floods
Rolls through his half year snow-blocked, ice-clad woods,
To where the rich magnolia swings its breath
In radiant Florida's eternal summer.
Wise were their laws and noble were their lives,
Hearing their forests thundering in the storm,
And seeing them put on their changing garb
To every changing season. For them rose
The wood-swathed mountain, cloud-capped; for them smiled
The green and leafy valley; silver waters
Rose to their lips, and food of earth and air
Fell to their arrows. The stern and awful roar
Of great Niagara filled the western end
Of their Long House, and by its eastern door
The peaceful Hudson flowed in whispers low.
Within that Long House every bird that flies,
From the strong eagle soaring to the sun
To the rich humming-bird that murmurs sweet
Around its flowers, was theirs; and every shape
That only claimed the ground whereon to dwell,
From the tall moose that trampled underneath
His broad splay-hoofs strong saplings branched with leaves
That made the wren's and robin's nested home
A sylvan pillar, tore with craunching teeth
The moose-wood's mottled bark, and from whose front
The hungry panther turned his blazing eyes,
To the striped squirrel rolling to his grot
The oak's brown acorn, all, alone were theirs.
Where are they now, the noble Iroquois !
Where are they now! The hollow echo gives
No answer, for the forests where they lived
Have vanished utterly. Where are they now!
Answer, ye scattered spectres, wearing aye
Your sunken heads upon your tawny breasts,
And staggering in the white man's midst, a shame
To human nature; or, perchance, aloof
Wandering around the sparkling streams that once
Flashed to your paddle-through the woods that rang
Once to your war-whoop,-scathed and blighted men,
Answer, and from your pale and trembling lips
Would come,
Go, ask the white man in his pride
What, what hath bowed the red man to the dust;
His power, his strength, his might, that made his law
And trampled us as Autumn in his fury,
Rends the sear leaves, and tramples them to earth,
The sad memorials of relentless power."
109. A FOREST NOOK.
A NOOK within the forest; overhead
The branches arch, and shape a pleasant bower,
Breaking white cloud, blue sky, and sunshine bright
Into pure ivory and sapphire spots
And flecks of gold; a soft, cool emerald tint
Colors the air, as though the delicate leaves
Emitted self-born light. What splendid walls,
And what a gorgeous roof, carved by the hand
Of glorious Nature! Here the spruce thrusts in
Its bristling plume, tipped with its pale-green points,
The hemlock shows its borders freshly fringed,
The smoothly scalloped beech-leaf, and the birch,
Cut into ragged edges, interlace.
While here and there, through clefts, the laurel hangs
Its gorgeous chalices half-brimmed with dew,
As though to hoard it for the haunting elves
The moonlight calls to this their festal hall.
A thick, rich grassy carpet clothes the earth
Sprinkled with autumn leaves. The fern displays
Its fluted wreath beaded beneath with drops
Of richest brown; the wild-rose spreads its breast
Of delicate pink, and the o'erhanging fir
Has dropped its dark, long cone.
Such nooks as this are common in the woods:
And all these sights and sounds the commonest
In Nature when she wears her summer prime.
Yet by them pass not lightly: to the wise
They tell the beauty and the harmony
Of e'en the lowliest things that God hath made.
That this familiar earth and sky are full
Of his ineffable power and majesty.
That in the humble objects, seen too oft
To be regarded, is such wondrous grace,
The art of man is vain to imitate.
That the low flower our careless foot treads down
Is a rich shrine of incense delicate,
And radiant beauty, and that God hath formed
All, from the mountain wreathing round its brow
The black cars of the thunder, to the grain
Of silver sand the bubbling spring casts up,
With deepest forethought and severest care.
And thus these noteless, lowly things are types
Of his perfection and divinity.
110. THE POOR AND THE RICH.
THE rich man's son inherits lands,
And piles of brick and stone and gold,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.
The rich man's son inherits cares.
The bank may break, the factory burn,
Some breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft white hands would scarcely earn
A living that would suit his turn ;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.
What does the poor man's son inherit ?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit ;
"King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art ;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What does the poor man's son inherit ?
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from enjoyment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What does the
inherit ?
man's son
poor
A patience learned by being poor;
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it;
A fellow feeling that is sure
To make the outcast bless his door;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
Oh, rich man's son, there is a toil
That with all others level stands ;
Large charity doth never soil,
But only whitens, soft white hands;
This is the best crop from thy lands—
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being rich to hold in fee.
Oh, poor man's son, scorn not thy state!
There is worse weariness than thine,—
In being merely rich and great :
Work only makes the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign,-
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.
Both heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last-
Both children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast,
By record of a well-filled past!
A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life to hold in fee.
111. THE FIGHT OF PASO DEL MAR.
GUSTY and raw was the morning,
A fog hung over the seas,
And its gray skirts, rolling inland,
Were torn by the mountain trees;
No sound was heard, but the dashing
Of waves on the sandy bar,
When Pablo of San Diego
Rode down to the Paso del Mar.
The pescadór, out in his shallop,
Gathering his harvest so wide,
Sees the dim bulk of the headland
Loom over the waste of the tide ;
He sees, like a white thread, the pathway
Wind round on the terrible wall,
Where the faint, moving speck of the rider
Seems hovering close to its fall!
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