What seeks Megone? His foes are near

*

Grey Jocelyn's eye is never sleeping,

And the garrison lights are burning clear,

Where Phillips'† men their watch are keeping.
Let him hie him away through the dank river fog,
Never rustling the boughs nor displacing the rocks,
For the eyes and the ears which are watching for Mogg,
Are keener than those of the wolf or the fox.

He starts- there's a rustle among the leaves :
Another- the click of his gun is heard!
A footstep is it the step of Cleaves,

With Indian blood on his English sword?
Steals Harmon down from the sands of York,
With hand of iron and foot of cork?

Has Scammon, versed in Indian wile,

For vengeance left his vine hung isle ? §
Hark! at that whistle, soft and low,

How lights the eye of Mogg Megone!

The owner and commander of the garrison at Black Point, which Mogg attacked and plundered. He was an old man at the period to which the tale relates.

† Major Phillips, one of the principle men of the Colony. His garrison sustained a long and terrible siege by the savages. As a magistrate and a gentleman, he exacted of his plebeian neighbors a remarkable degree of deference. The Court Records of the settlement inform us that an individual was fined for the heinous offence of saying that "Major Phillips' mare was as lean as an Indian dog."

Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, now York, was, for many years, the terror of the Eastern Indians. In one of his expeditions up the Kennebec river, at the head of a party of rangers, he discovered twenty of the savages asleep by a large fire. Cautiously creeping towards them, until he was certain of his aim, he ordered his men to single out their objects. The first discharge killed or mortally wounded the whole number of the unconscious sleepers.

§ Wood Island, near the mouth of the Saco. It was visited by the Sieur De Monts and Champlain, in 1603. The following extract, from the journal of the latter, relates to it. "Having left the Kennebec, we ran along the coast to the westward, and cast anchor under a small island, near the main-land, where we saw twenty or more natives. I here visited an island, beautifully clothed with a fine growth of forest trees, particularly of the oak and walnut; and overspread with vines, that, in their season, produce excellent grapes. We named it the island of Bacchus."- Les voyages de Sieur Champlain. Liv. 2, c. 3.

A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow
"Boon welcome, Johnny Bonython !"

Out steps, with cautious foot and slow,
And quick, keen glances to and fro,
The hunted outlaw, Bonython!*
A low, lean swarthy man is he,
With blanket-garb and buskined knee,

And nought of English fashion on;

For he hates the race from whence he sprung,
And he couches his words in the Indian tongue.

"Hush let the Sachem's voice be weak;

The water-rat shall hear him speak

The owl shall whoop in the white man's ear,
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is here!"
He pauses
dark, over cheek and brow,

A flush, as of shame, is stealing now:
"Sachem!" he says, "let me have the land,
Which stretches away upon either hand,

* John Bonython was the son of Richard Bonython, Gent., one of the most efficient and able magistrates of the Colony. John proved to be "a degenerate plant." In 1635, we find, by the Court Records, that, for some offence, he was fined 40s. In 1640, he was fined for abuse toward R. Gibson, the minister, and Mary, his wife. Soon after, he was fined for disorderly conduct in the house of his father. In 1645, the "Great and General Court" adjudged "John Bonython outlawed, and incapable of any of his majesty's laws, and proclaimed him a rebel." [Court Records of the Province, 1645.] In 1651, he bade defiance to the laws of Massachusetts, and was again outlawed. He acted independently of all law and authority; and hence, doubtless, his burlesque title of "The Sagamore of Saco," which has come down to the present generation in the following epitaph:

"Here lies Bonython; the Sagamore of Saco,

He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko."

By some means or other, he obtained a large estate. In this poem, I have taken some liberties with him, not strictly warranted by historical facts, although the conduct imputed to him is in keeping with his general character. Over the last years of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even the manner of his death is uncertain. He was supposed to have been killed by the Indians; but this is doubted by the able and indefatigable author of the history of Saco and Biddeford. Part I. p. 115.

As far about as my feet can stray

In the half of a gentle summer's day,

From the leaping brook to the Saco river-
And the fair-haired girl, thou hast sought of me,
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be
The wife of Mogg Megone forever."

There's a sudden light in the Indian's glance,
A moment's trace of powerful feeling-
Of love or triumph, or both perchance,
Over his proud, calm features stealing.
"The words of my father are very good;
He shall have the land, and water, and wood;
And he who harms the Sagamore John,

Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone;

But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on my breast,
And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my nest."

"But father!"-and the Indian's hand

Falls gently on the white man's arm,
And with a smile as shrewdly bland

As the deep voice is slow and calm-
"Where is my father's singing-bird-
The sunny eye, and sunset hair?
I know I have my father's word,

And that his word is good and fair;
But, will my father tell me where
Megone shall go and look for his bride?
For he sees her not by her father's side."

The dark, stern eye of Bonython

Flashes over the features of Mogg Megone,
In one of those glances which search within
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone

;

Remains where the trace of emotion has been. "Does the Sachem doubt? Let him go with me, And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall see."

*Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or bog, called the "Heath," in Saco, containing thirteen hundred acres. On this brook, and surrounded by wild and romantic scenery, is a beautiful waterfall, of more than sixty feet.

Cautious and slow, with pauses oft,
And watchful eyes and whispers soft,
The twain are stealing through the wood,
Leaving the downward-rushing flood,
Whose deep and solemn roar behind,
Grows fainter on the evening wind.

Hark!—is that the angry howl
Of the wolf, the hills among?
Or the hooting of the owl,

On his leafy cradle swung?-
Quickly glancing, to and fro,
Listening to each sound they go:
Round the columns of the pine,

Indistinct, in shadow, seeming
Like some old and pillared shrine;
With the soft and white moonshine,
Round the foliage-tracery shed
Of each column's branching head,

For its lamps of worship gleaming!
And the sounds awakened there,

In the pine leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,

By the fingers of the air,

For the anthem's dying fall

Lingering round some temple's wall!
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound!
Is not Nature's worship thus
Ceaseless ever, going on?

Hath it not a voice for us

In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear

Words of blended love and fear,

Of the mighty Soul of all?

Nought had the twain of thoughts like these

As they wound along through the crowded trees,

Where never had rung the axeman's stroke
On the gnarled trunk of the rough-barked oak;
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log,

Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine,
Turning aside the wild grape vine,
And lightly crossing the quaking bog
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog,
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog
. Creeps into the chill moonshine!

Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard
The preaching of the Holy Word:
Sanchekantacket's isle of sand
Was once his father's hunting land,
Where zealous Hiacoomes* stood
The wild apostle of the wood,

Shook from his soul the fear of harm,

And trampled on the Powwaw's charm;
Until the wizard's curses hung
Suspended on his palsying tongue,
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall,
Trembled before the forest Paul !

A cottage hidden in the wood

Red through its seams a light is glowing,
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude,

A narrow lustre throwing.

*Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher on Martha's Vineyard; for a biography of whom the reader is referred to Increase Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians, 1726.. The following is related of him: "One Lord's day, after meeting, where Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came in a Powwaw very angry, and said, 'I know all the meeting Indians are liars. You say you don't care for the Powwaws;'-then, calling two or three of them by name, he railed at them, and told them they were deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all the meeting Indians, if they set about it. But Hiacoomes told him that he would be in the midst of all the Powwaws in the island, and they should do the utmost they could against him; and when they should do their worst by their witchcraft to kill him, he would without fear set himself against them, by remembering Jehovah. He told them also he did put all the Powwows under his heel. Such was the faith of this good man. Nor were these Powwaws ever able to do these Christian Indians any hurt, though others were frequently hurt and killed by them."- Mayhew's Book, pp. 6, 7, c. 1.