Classic Poem

I.

The morning air was freshly breathing,
The morning mists were wildly wreathing;
Day's earliest beams were kindling o'er
The wood-crowned hills and murmuring shore.
'Twas summer; and the forests threw
Their checkered shapes of varying hue,
In mingling, changeful shadows seen,
O'er hill and bank, and headland green.
Blithe birds were carolling on high
Their matin music to the sky,
As glanced their brilliant hues along,
Filling the groves with life and song;
All innocent and wild and free
Their sweet, ethereal minstrelsy.
The dew-drop sparkled on the spray,
Danced on the wave the inconstant ray;
And moody grief, with dark control,
There only swayed the human soul!

II.

With equal swell, above the flood,
The forest-cinctured mountain stood;
Its eastward cliffs, a rampart wild,
Rock above rock sublimely piled.
What scenes of beauty met his eye,
The watchful sentinel on high!
With all its isles and inlets lay
Beneath the calm, majestic bay;
Like molten gold, all glittering spread,
Where the clear sun his influence shed;
In wreathy, crispid brilliance borne,
While laughed the radiance of the morn.
Round rocks, that from the headlands far
Their barriers reared, with murmuring war,
The chafing stream, in eddying play,
Fretted and dashed its foamy spray;
Along the shelving sands its swell
With hushed and equal cadence fell;
And here, beneath the whispering grove,
Ran rippling in the shadowy cove.
Thy thickets with their liveliest hue,
Aquetnet green! were fair to view;
Far curved the winding shore, where rose
Pocasset's hills in calm repose;
Or where descending rivers gave
Their tribute to the ampler wave.
Emerging frequent from the tide,
Scarce noticed mid its waters wide,
Lay flushed with morning's roseate smile,
The gay bank of some little isle;
Where the lone heron plumed his wing,
Or spread it as in act to spring,
Yet paused, as if delight it gave
To bend above the glorious wave.

III.

Where northward spread the unbounded scene,
Oft, in the valley's bosom green,
The hamlets' mouldering ruins showed,
Where war with daemon brand had strode.
By prostrate hedge and fence o'erthrown,
And fields by blackening hillocks known,
And leafless tree, and scattered stone,
The midnight murderer's work was shown.
Oft melting in the distant view
The cot sent up its incense blue,
As yet unwrapp'd by hostile fire;
And, mid its trees, some rustic spire,
A peaceful signal, told that there
Was sought the God of peace in prayer.
The W AMPANOAG from the height
Of Haup, who strained his anxious sight,
To mark if foes their covert trace,
Beheld, and curs'd the Christian race!

IV.

Now two-score years of peace had pass'd
Since in the west the battle yell
Was borne on every echoing blast,
Until the Pequots' empire fell;
And S ASSACÖUS , now no more,
Lord of a thousand bowmen, fled;
And all the chiefs, his boast before,
Were mingled with the unhonoured dead.
Sannap and Sagamore were slain,
On Mystic's banks, in one red night;
The once far-dreaded king in vain
Sought safety in inglorious flight;
And reft of all his regal pride,
By the fierce Maqua's hand he died.
Long o'er the land, with cloudless hue,
Had peace outspread her skies of blue;
The blood-stained axe was buried long;
Till M ETACOM his war-dance held,
And round the flaming pyre the song
Of vengeance and of death was yelled.
The steeps of Haup reverbed afar
The Wampanoägs' shout for war;
Fiercely they trim their crested hair,
The sanguine battle stains prepare,
And martial gear, while over all
Proud waves the feathery coronal.
Their peäg belts are girt for fight,
Their loaded pouches slung aright,
The musket's tube is bright and true,
The tomahawk's edge is sharped anew,
And counsels stern and flas ring eyes
Betoken dangerous enterprise.

V.

The red fire is blazing; ring compassing ring,
They whirled in the war-dance, and circuiting sing;
And the chieftans, in turn to the pile as they go,
In each brand saw a warrior, each gleed was a foe;
Revenge on the whites and their allies they swear,
Mohegans, Niantics, and Pequots they dare,
And slay in the dream of their ire;
The hills of Pocasset replied to their call,
And their Q UEEN senTher chiefs and her warriors all,
To the rites of the lurid fire.

VI.

Thro' Narraganset's countless clan
The secret wildfire circling ran;
In northern wilds, the gathering word
The tributary Nipnets heard.
Busy and quick, to their errand true,
The messengers of mischief flew,
Noiseless as speeds the painted dart,
In the thicket's shade, to the quarry's heart,
That scares not in its passage fleet
The woodland hosts from their green retreat.

VII.

But S AUSAMAN untimely slain,
Kindled too soon the fatal train.
From where with mild, majestic pride,
Their peaceful, and abounding tide
Quunihticut's broad waters pour
Even to the ocean's sounding shore —
Began one universal strife,
One murderous hunt for human life.
The wexing moon oft waned anew,
Ere grass upon the war-path grew:
On every gale the war-whoop rung;
From every grove the ambush sprung;
The hamlet's blaze, the midnight yell,
Ceased not the desperate strife to tell,
Till o'er the land, with blood defiled,
Went forth a voice of wailing wild;
A voice of mourning and of pain,
Their youngest and their bravest slain.

VIII.

Full high the savage pride was raised,
Till Narraganset's fortress blazed
When bleak December sheeted o'er
The wilderness with mantle hoar,
Reckless within their hold assailed,
They saw the avenging army pour,
Beheld their boasted bulwarks scaled.
The white men made their entrance good,
All slippery with their comrades' blood;
A thousand wigwams kindling sent
Their glare along the firmament;
The sun declining from his noon,
Faded, a dim, wan circle soon;
The heavens, around that lurid light
Frowned like the realms of central night;
Far, far around, the gleening snow
Was ruddy with the unnatural glow;
Where the dun column wreathing rolled,
Red flowed the river's tides below.
Amid the slaughtered, in their hold,
Stifling, in vain their warriors bold
Each blazing sconce in fury sought,
Poured on the foe their deadly shot,
Or in mad leaps of torture broke
Thro' sulphurous fire and volumed smoke; —
While uproar, flame, and deafening yell
Made the scene seem the vault of hell,
Where, writhing wild in penance dire,
Fiends danced mid pyramids of fire!
Nor ceased the musket roar, the shout,
The obstreperous clamours of the rout,
Till gathering night with shades profound
Of gloom and horror closed around.
Tracked by their blood along the snow,
Returned the victors, sad and slow; —
But, where the smoking ruins show
The prostrate citadel — one heap
Of smouldering ashes, broad and deep,
Where friend or husband none may trace,
The pride of Narraganset's race,
The grisly trophy of the fray,
A holocaust for freedom lay!

IX.

Stabbed in the heart of all their power,
The voice of triumph from that hour
Rose faintly, mid the heathen host,
Sunk was their pride, and quelled their boast.
Broken and scattering wide and far,
Feebly they yet maintained the war.
Spring came; on blood alone intent,
Men o'er her flowers regardless went;
Thro' cedar grove and thicket green,
The serried steel was glistening sheen;
Earth lay untilled; the deadly chase
Ceased not of that devoted race,
Till of the tribes whose rage at first
In one o'erwhelming deluge burst,
No trace the inquiring eye could find,
Save in the ruins left behind.
Like wintry torrent they had poured,
O'er mounds and rocks it raved and roared,
Dashed in blind fury where it broke,
In showery spray and wavy smoke;
And now, sad vestige of its wrath,
Alone was left its wasted path.

X.

Stark thro' the dismal fens they lie,
Or on the felon gibbet high
Their mangled members hung proclaim
Their constancy — their conquerors' shame.
Ah! happier they, who in the strife
For freedom fell, than o'er the main,
Those who in slavery's galling chain
Still bore the load of hated life, —
Bowed to base tasks their generous pride,
And scourged and broken-hearted died!
The remnant of the conquered band,
Submissive, at the victor's hand,
As for a boon of mercy, crave
A shred of all their father's land,
A transient shelter and a grave.
Or far where boundless lakes expand,
With weary feet the exiles roam,
Until their tawny brethren gave
The persecuted race a home.

XI.

But M ETACOM , the cause of all,
Last of his host, was doomed to fall.
Unconquered yet, when at his side
His boldest and his wisest died;
When all whom kin or friendship made
To his fallen fortunes dear were dead;
Beggared in wealth and power; pursued
A sentenced wretch, thro' swamp and wood; —
YeThe escaped — tho' he mighThear
The hunters' uproar round him wake,
And bullets whispered death was near;
O'er bank and stream, thro' grove and brake
He led them, fleet as mountain deer,
Nor yet his limbs had learned to quake,
Nor his heart caught the taint of fear.

XII.

His covert to his foes unknown,
With such worn train as war had spared,
Once more to Haup the chief repaired,
Of all his line the home and throne.
There, where the spirits of the dead
Seemed flitting through each moonlight glade, —
Where pageant hosts of glory fled
In mockery rose with vain parade, —
In gloomy grandeur o'er his head,
Where forests cast corgenial shade, —
Brooding mid scenes of perished state,
He mused to madness on his fate.
South from the tarlid swamp that spread
Below the mount, an upland rose;
Where towering elms all gray with eld,
And birchen thickets close concealed
The hunted race from quest of foes.
Beneath, their screen the elders threw,
And fern and bramble rankly grew;
By simple nature wisely taught
Such covert still the savage sought:
So in her leafy form the hare
Sits couched and still, when down the gale,
Of hounds and horns the mingling blare
She hears in tones of terror swell.
So spreads, beneath the liquid surge,
To shun the approaching monster's gorge,
The wary fish its inky blood,
And dies with rayless hue the flood.

XIII.

Beside the mountain's rugged steeps,
The S ACHEM now his council keeps;
Though straitened in that hopeless stound,
Begirt with fear and famine round,
Resolved himself on daring deed,
He listened reckless of their rede.
Once more within their ancient hold,
How dwindled from their pomp of old!
Toilworn and few and doubtful met
The P ANIESE in their council state.
High rose the cliffs; but proud above
The regal oaks their branches fling,
Arching aloft with verdant cove,
Where thick their leaves they interwove,
Fit canopy for woodland king.
Vines, with tenacious fibres, high
Clomb o'er those rocks luxuriantly;
Oft o'er their rugged masses gray,
With rustling breeze the wild flowers play;
While at the base their purple hues,
Impearled with morning's glittering dews,
Bloomed round the pile of rifted stone,
Which, as in semblance of a throne,
The hand of Nature there had placed;
And rambling wild, where lower still
Bubbled and welled a sparkling rill,
These simple flowers its margin graced.
Clear as the brightest steel to view,
Thro' mossy turf of greenest hue,
Its lymph that gushing fountain spread: —
And still though ages since have sped,
That little spring is seen;
It bears his name whose deeds of dread
Disturbed its margin green;
As pure, as full, its waters rise,
While those who once its peace profaned,
Have pass'd, and to the stranger's eyes
Nor trace, nor memory hath remained.
Smooth lay the turf before the seat,
Sprinkled with flow'rets fair and sweet;
The violet and the daisy gay,
And goldcups bright like spangles lay.
Thick round the glade the forest grew,
Whose quivering leaves and pillars through,
The eye might catch the sparkling ray,
Where sea-gulls wheeled in mazy play.

XIV.

There met the council, round the throne,
Where he, in power, in thought alone,
Not like the sentenced outlaw sate,
The abandoned child of wayward fate,
But as of those tall cliffs a part,
Cut by some bolder sculptor's art,
The imaged God, erect and proud,
To whom the simple savage bowed.
His was the strength the weak that sways;
The glance the servile herd obeys;
The brow of majesty, where thought
And care their deepest lines had wrought,
And told, like furrows broad that mark
The giant ash-tree's fretted bark,
How stormy years, with forceful sway,
Will wear youth's scarless gloss away.
Shorn were his locks, whose ample flow
Had else revealed him to the foe;
And travel-stained the beaver spoils,
That sheathed his martial limbs below.
But seemed it thaThe yet would show,
Even mid the hunter's closing toils,
Some splendours of his former state,
When in his royalties he sate.
For round his brow with symbols meet,
In wampum wrought with various die,
Entwined a studded coronet,
With circling plumage waving high.
Above his stalworth shoulders set
A feathery-woven mantle lay,
Where many-tinctured pinions gay
Sprinkled the raven's plumes of jet.
Collar beneath and gorget shone,
The peäg armlets and the zone,
That round with fretted shell-work graced,
Clipped with broad ring his shapely waist.
And all war's dread caparison,
Horn, pouch, and tomahawk were slung;
And wide, and far descending hung,
Quaintly embossed with bird and flower,
The belt that marked the S ACHEM'S power.

XV

Know ye the Indian warrior race?
How their light form springs in strength and grace.
Like the pine on their native mountain side,
That will not bow in its deathless pride;
Whose rugged limbs of stubborn stone
No flexuous power of art will own,
But bend to heaven's red bolt alone!
How their hue is deep as the western die
That fades in Autumn's evening sky;
That lives for ever upon their brow,
In the summer's heat, and the winter's snow;
How their raven locks of tameless strain,
Stream like the desert courser's mane:
How their glance is far as the eagle's flight;
And fierce and true as the panther's sight:
How their souls are like the crystal wave,
Where the spirit dwells in his northern cave;
Unruffled in its caverned bed,
Calm lies its glimmering surface spread;
Its springs, its outlet unconfess'd,
The pebble's weight upon its breast
Shall wake its echoing thunders deep,
And when their muttering accents sleep,
Its dark recesses hear them yet,
And tell of deathless love or hate!

XVI.

The council met; each bosom there
Pregnant with doubt or with despair;
And each wan eye and hollow cheek
The waste of toil and famine speak;
Yet o'er the dew-webbed turf reclined,
Silent they sate; and stranger's eye
Had deemed, in idle mood resigned
To nature's sweet tranquillity,
They lay to catch the mingling sound
Of woods and waters murmuring round; —
That the robin carolling blithe they heard,
Or the breeze the shivering leaves that stirred.
Among their eagle plumes it played,
And with their cinctures dalliance made;
But customed were they to control
The cradled whirlwinds of the soul;
And calm was every warrior's mien,
As if there a feast of love had been.

XVII.

Ill could the fiery S ACHEM brook
That gloomy, never-changing look.
Though long inured to mazy wile,
Through all the thousand lakes of guile,
His secret skiff had held its course,
And shunned each torrent's eddying force,
Yet ever would the fiery soul
Through all the circles dart,
Which, like the ice around the pole,
Begirt the Indian heart.

XVIII

Up started M ETACOM ; — the train
Of all his wrongs, — his perished power, —
His blasted hopes, — his kindred slain, —
His quenchless hate which blazed in vain,
So fierce in its triumphant hour,
But now to his own heart again
Withdrawn, but ran like liquid flame
Boiling through all his fevered frame, —
All, all seemed rushing on his brain: —
Each trembling fibre told the strife,
Which quelled that storm with madness rife,
Gathering in horrors o'er his brow,
And flashing wildly bright below
While o'er his followers faint and few,
On inquest stern his glances flew,
Across his quivering lips in haste
A smile of bitterness there pass'd; —
As if a beam from the lamp had stole
That burnt within his inmost soul,
As in a deep, sepulchral cell, —
It seemed with transient curl to tell,
How in his triumph or his fall,
He doubted, and he scorned them all!
But silence straight the S ACHEM broke,
And thus his taunt abrupThe spoke —

XIX.

" Still do we live? to yonder skies
Yet does our warm breath buoyant rise, —
To that Great Spirit, who ne'er inhales
Incense from all the odorous gales,
In the world of warrior souls, more blest,
Than that respired from the freeman's breast!
Yet do we live? or struck by fear,
As the wretch by subtle sorcerer near,
Palsied and pining, must we lie
In yon dark fen, and dimly spy
Our fathers' hills, our native sky: —
Like the coward ghosts, whom the bark of stone
Leaves in the eternal wave to moan,
And wail for ever, as they descry
The blissful isle they can come not nigh;
Where the souls of the brave from toil released,
Prolong the chase, the dance, the feast,
And fill the sparkling chalice high,
From the springs of immortality!
Say, has oblivion kindly come,
To veil remembrance in its gloom?
Have ye forgot, that whilome here,
Your fathers drove the bounding deer;
When now, so works the Evil One,
Like heartless deer their children run; —
Or trembling in their darksome lair,
While fear's cold dews gush full and fast,
One venturous glance no longer dare
Round on their native forests cast.
The hunters came, the charm they brought;
The tempting lure the senseless sought,
And tamely to the spoiler gave
The ancient birthright of the brave!

XX.

" Oblivion? O! the films of age
Shall shroud yon sun's resplendent eye
And waning in his pilgrimage,
His latest beam in heaven shall die,
Ere on the soil from whence we fled,
The story of our wrongs be dead!
Could the tall trunk of peace once more
Lift its broad foliage on our shore;
And on the beaver robe outspread
Our remnant rest beneath its shade;
From stainless bowls and incense high
Amid the blue and cloudless sky;
Mark round us waves unrimpled flow,
And o'er green paths no bramble grow; —
Say where in earth profoundly deep,
Should all our wrongs in darkness sleep?
What art the sod shall o'er them heap;
And rear the tree whose verdant tower
Aloft shall build, beneath embower, —
Till men shall pass and shall not know
The secrets foul that rest below?
The memory ne'er can die, of all
For blood, for vengeance that can call,
While feels a red man in his breast
The might, the soul his sires possess'd,
Toil, death, and danger can defy,
Look up to heaven, and proudly cry,
Eternal and Almighty O NE ,
Father of all! I am thy son!

XXI

" Poor, crouching children of the brave!
Lo! where the broad and sparkling wave
Anointed once the freeman's shore,
Your father's tents arise no more.
There lie your masters in their pride;
And not so thick, o'er torpid tide,
The blessed light that beams on earth
Warms the coiled vipers into birth,
And not so loathsome do they spread
Their slime along its sedgy bed,
As glittering on my aching eyes,
The white man's homes accursed rise!
I rave; — and ye are cold and tame;
Forget ye M ASSASOIET'S shame?
Forget ye him, who, snared and caught,
Soared on the chainless wings of thought,
A lowly captive might not be,
For his heart broke, and he was free!
Last, poorest of a mighty race,
Proscribed, devoted to the chase,
I hold this cumbrous load of life,
Avenging powers! from you;
The remnant of its dreary strife
To hoarded vengeance due!
But ye — live on; and lowly kneel,
And crouching kiss the impending steel,
Which, in mere weariness of toil,
Full sated with you kinsmen's spoil,
May haply grant the boon to live; —
For this your cringing taubut give;
And o'er your father's hallowed grave
Drag the foul members of the slave!
O slaves! the children of the free!
The hunted brute cries shame on ye!
At bay each threatening horn he turns,
As fierce the enclosing circle burns; —
And ye are baited in your lair,
And will ye fight not for despair? "

XXII.

Thus spoke the S ACHEM in his ire,
Bright anger blazing in his eye;
And, as the bolt of living fire
Streams through the horrors of the sky,
Kindling the pine, whose flames aspire
In one red pyramid on high,
In all his warriors, as he spoke,
The rising fury fiercely woke;
Each tomahawk, in madness swayed,
Gleamed mid the forest's quivering shade;
Loud rose the war-whoop, wild and shrill;
The frowning rock, the towering hill
Prolonged the indignant cry:
Far o'er the stilly aether borne,
By the light pinions of the morn,
It fell on the lonely traveller's ear,
Round on the wilderness in fear
He gazed with anxious eye;
On distant wave the wanderer well
Knew the loud larum terrible,
And trembled at the closing swell,
As slow its echoes die.

XXIII

" 'Tis well — no more, " the S ACHEM said,
" The SpiriThears your answer made.
But who art thou, whose arm alone
Hangs nerveless at thy side?
Who mak'st thyself mid warriors one,
And, dog-like, hast no single tone,
To swell their shout of pride?
Son of a base and recreant band!
Who from the common tyrant's hand,
Took the war-hatchet, blood died pledge
Of peace between them and our foe,
And proved too well how keen its edge; —
Its temper well their brethren know.
M IANTONIMO'S honoured head
Our laggard vengeance will upbraid; —
C ANONCHET and P ANOQUIN , slain
By coward hands, look forth in vain,
From their eternal towers, to spy
Mohegan ghosts go wandering by; —
For blood a thousand heroes cry,
Whose bones, untombed, dishonoured lie:
No kindred hands, with reverent care,
Those relics from the waste shall bear;
Ne'er from his path shall traveller turn,
Beside their grassy mound to mourn;
Nor, prostrate stretched beside their grave,
Sighing shall say — there sleep the brave!
And shalt thou live, and mingle here
With those their memory who revere? "

XXIV.

Young A GAMOUN , by many a snare
Of fame, revenge and promise fair,
Long since from the Mohegan shore
The Sachem and his warriors bore:
Then the young hero's heart beat high,
With all the patriot's sympathy; —
Fierce as the battle god, for fight
Collecting his unconquered might,
Along the war-path of the heaven,
Revealed in red and sulphurous levin,
Rolling his gloomy clouds afar,
Exulting at the scent of war; —
So he went forth, in strength and youth,
And hailed hope's paltering form as truth:
But years had passed since hope grew cold;
False was the fraudful tale she told;
Ambition's dream and promise high
Were but the song of birds flown by!
He saw his marshalled tribe oppose
Their brethren, as their mortal foes;
He saw their scanted numbers fail,
Like autumn's leaves on winter's gale;
Until, his hopes, his followers gone,
The western chief remained alone.
Mistrust and jealousy had torn
A noble heart by fortune worn;
From council and from power estranged,
He saw the S ACHEM'S visage changed;
The silver chain, in earthly dust,
Had caught the stains of human rust;
Till in the hour of adverse fate,
Its links were snapp'd for e'er by hate.

XXV.

So where at first, with gurgling rush,
The founts of mighty rivers gush,
So near the kindred streamlets flow,
Their pebbly channels murmuring through,
Their distance at a stride the child
May measure, as he gambols wild:
Each, mingling with its countless tides,
O'er earth's unequal bosom glides,
Through adverse climes and distant realms, —
And when their tribute ocean whelms,
With stranger name each stream appears,
Disgorged in differenThemispheres.
Untainted yet by crime and wo,
While nature's generous currents flow,
Thro' sympathy's luxuriant mould,
Hearts, side by side, their course may hold;
But parted on the wastes of time,
How soon forgot that earlier clime!

XXVI.

" Speak! traitor, speak! thy thoughts unfold!
Be thy cloaked treasons instant told!
Whizzes in air the venomed dart,
Ere yet it rankles in the heart; —
Prepared to sting the lurking snake
His monitory hiss will wake;
Hiss, serpent, hiss! "
The S ACHEM spoke:
Resentment rising seemed to choke
The words of wrath that forth had broke:
But conscience lenTher bland relief,
And calmly spoke the injured chief.
— " Whate'er of private feud my heart
To my tongue's language might impart,
I learned to bury and to hide,
When battling on my country's side.
Who, when her sacred cause inspires,
Enkindles at polluted fires,
Where unclean spirits hold retreat,
Where none but the impure may meet,
His passions base, revenge or pride, —
Curs'd be that guilty parricide!
O noteless in the songs of fame,
A beacon blaze his recreant name
Hovering for ever may it be
O'er the dull fens of infamy!
The stem must crack — the cause must fail,
It such unholy warmth prevail!
But wherefore more? ye've known me long,
Ye saw me when your cause was strong —
Ye proved me when your hopes were weak,
If ye have found me wanting, speak!

XXVII.

" Here if we linger, what remains?
Inglorious death, accursed chains!
Ah! tho' the bleak and sheeted blast
Round Haup's bare cliffs its shroud shall cast,
And sweep in howling, wild affray
The sere and shivering leaves away,
Again its daemons far will fly,
When milder spirits rule the sky;
The moon of birds her horns will show,
The bough will bud, the fountain flow:
But M ETACOM , thy second spring
No Weko-lis shall ever sing!
Once Pawkanawkut's warriors stood,
Thick as the columns of the wood;
On shores and isles, unconquered men
Called M ASSASOIET father, then: —
The blasting wind with poisoned breath
Brought on its withered pinions death,
Ere bade the O WANNOX o'er the deep
Their castle-barks triumphant sweep: —
Past is the Autumn of our pride,
When every leaf with blood was died: —
And now dread Winter's troop alone
Shriek round our power and promise gone!
From earth when nations perish, ne'er
Again their leaflets shall appear.
The stranger, in the after time,
Weets not of glory's earlier clime!
Perchance, like yon dwarf firs that grow
Rooted in rocky cleft on high,
As things above, or joy or wo,
That frown against the beauteous sky, —
Of all our tribes, the heirs of want,
A feeble few our land may haunt;
The gloomy ghosts of dead renown
A while from sire to son go down;
And as with spectral visit say
ThaThere the red men once had sway!

XXVIII.

" Veiling in gloom his awful face,
The Spirit smiles not on our race,
As once he smiled with beams of bliss,
Ere discord's snakes were heard to hiss,
One council fire the nations knew;
One ample roof o'er all was spread;
The stately tree beside it grew,
The skies of blue rose overhead
Once on our wampum-belts how fair
The stainless lines of peace were wrought,
And all the sacred symbols there
With wise and friendly meaning fraught!
Once circling far the glittering chain
Begirt the sea, the isles, the main;
The belt is broke; the chain is riven,
And we are left by angry heaven!
Fraught with our weal and with our wo,
The tide of fate runs deep and slow;
On to eternity it rides,
Mysterious as the wave,
Where Huron disembogues its tides,
That slowly rises, slow subsides,
As cycles find their grave.
Full low our country's best blood runs,
And few and feeble are her sons;
Will ye the desperate venture try,
And leave the dreary channel dry?

XXIX.

" Wild are the wolds and deep the woods
That girdle far our western floods.
There merrily the red deer roam,
There may we fight ourselves a home!
Yet may submission purchase peace , "
" Cease, " cried the furious S ACHEM , " cease! "
For long had died the war-whoop's strain,
The warrior's fire was quenched again.
As the last moanings of the gale
Sigh out the tempest's sad farewell,
The whirlwind wakened by their lord
In mournful murmurs died;
And thro' that melancholy horde
Sunk all their wakened pride.

XXX.

" Traitor, enough! thy wish is given!
Go howl around the walls of heaven!
There's ample room, apostate! there;
Go thou that company to share
Of spectres vile, whom doom decreed
Proclaims the dastard traitor's meed.
For aye those guilty shadows speed
Swift thro' that misty land,
On feverish chase, which end hath none,
Whose phantom game shall ne'er be won,
Till retribution shall be done; —
Go, then, to join the band!
Seal with thy blood the covenant made,
When U NCAS first our rights betrayed.
The white man's arms are best employed,
Their recreant proselyte destroyed. "

XXXI.

He said, and from beside him caught
The tube with deadly vengeance fraught; —
Then instant forth A HAUTON stood
(He too of the Mohegan blood),
But short the raving S ACHEM broke
The words the intercessor spoke.
" By Sassacous' honoured bones,
Where'er, untombed in sacred stones,
In the fierce Maquas clime they lie —
No more, or with him shalt thou die! "
Then on his friend the sentenced chief
Cast a last look intent and brief;
It bade A HAUTON not to dare
The wolf's wild fangs within his lair,
But life for nobler vengeance bear.
Stern lowered the Wampanoägs round,
Subdued beneath their chieftain's frown;
Breathed to the doom of death no sound,
While A GAMOUN knelt calmly down,
Unblenched and firm; awhile his gaze
The horde, the earth, the heaven surveys,
As giving them his last good-bye: —
" Brothers! behold a warrior die!
For kindred let the white men grieve;
To those who love me, all I leave
Is the large legacy of hate!
True as the ball that drinks my blood,
Mohegan warriors shall make good
To M ETACOM and his the debt.
Escape be yours; — but O! if won,
Beware! " he spoke no more,
For closely now the levelled gun
Was placed his heart before.

XXXII.

A moment's pause intensely still; —
A quick, cold, deep and silent thrill, —
The steel gives fire, — the chieftain fell, —
The death-shot's sound his only knell,
And a low murmur's smothered tone
His parting requiem alone!

XXXIII.

" Take, A RESKOUI ! take thine own! " —
With voice subdued the S ACHEM said, —
" A braver offering never bled,
To thee in battle's gory bed!
And I could mourn the recreant thought
By which so dear a life was bought,
But that I may not waste a sigh,
On foul, infectious treachery.
Brothers, away! not yet the foe
These our last haunts of safety know;
Till better days, our watch-word be
Hope, vigilance, and secrecy. "

XXXIV.

They raise the bleeding corse, and back
Hold to their dark retreat the track;
With M ETACOM remains alone
The brave, the generous A NNAWON .
" Brother and friend, " — the S ACHEM cried,
" The only friend my fortunes know,
When all by kin, by love allied,
Are captive to the unpitying foe, —
Or unavenged, are journeying slow
To that far world where spirits go: —
O friend! my trust is firm in thee,
As in his dream the initiate's faith;
Calm is thy soul in victory,
And bold when comes the hour of scaith.
Yon trembling herd it is not meet
Should read our final purpose yet;
Their courage is an old year's flame,
Polluted and unworth the name;
Terror alone their hearts must sway —
For this the brave has bled to-day.
But I must fly — my native earth, —
My father's throne and council-hearth; —
I, of the peerless eagle face,
Must fly the hawk's unwonted chase, —
The insatiate hawk — who all will have,
Nor yields his victim e'en a grave!
Since childhood's earlier moons were dead,
When I forgot what things had been,
And claimed to rank with warrior men —
Of mortal foe I knew no dread.
Had nature made these limbs to quail
At danger's front, the white men ne'er
Had chilled them with the spells of fear; —
For, in those hours when dreams prevail, —
When on the boy's bewildered eyes
The future's shadowy visions rise,
I learn'd to fear nor wound nor fate
From those pale offspring of the east: —
This too oft sung the illumined priest,
When heaven he might interrogate,
Ere the Manittos' voices ceased.
This have I felt, when slaughter fell
Shrieked in my ear its murderous yell; —
This in the kindling battle's mell,
In deathful stour was proven well; —
This have my widowed fortunes found,
When all I love lie cold around; —
When like a blasted trunk, alone,
Leaf, blossom, bud, and scion gone,
I stand, — the fire, the axe defy,
And swift-consuming bolts on high.
It is not fear ! — but o'er my heart
The shade of sorrow oft will fly; —
And though from these fair scenes to part
Might ask the tribute of a sigh, —
That sigh, the last, the only one,
Becomes not M ASSASOIET'S son!

XXXV

" But let this pass; — by fraud or force,
Through Nipnet tribes we hold our course;
Y AMOYDEN to their broken bands
Yet dear, must through their northern lands
Make smooth our path. Thou say'st thaThe
Lists in Aquetnet's woods to hear
A bird, whose music is more dear
Than vengeance of than liberty.
A turtle-dove he nurses there,
And shelters with a parent's care.
That nest must be despoiled! the chief
Must share our common bond of grief!
And hear me, chieftain — ere our flight,
The last, the long-neglected rite,
Again must blaze in midnight gloom,
Prove if the spirits yet be dumb!
Since A RESKOUT sees no more,
Supine in heaven, his children's wo,
Evoking powers, our friends of yore,
The sacrifice of blood must pour,
And o'er their awful altars flow! "

XXXVI.

Here pause we for a while the song,
While they their counsels wild prolong,
Where many a troubled accent came,
Oft mingling with Y AMOYDEN'S name.