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"Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,

The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw —
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone."

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,

Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,

And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud

On the Virgin and her Son;

For terrible thoughts his memory crowd

Of evil seen and done

Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock,
In the Church's service won.

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,
As scowling on the priest he looks:
"Cowesass Cowesass - tawhich wessaseen? *

Let

father look upon Bomazeen-
my
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw:

Deerfield, and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703. He was afterwards killed in the attack upon Haverhill. Tradition says that on examining his dead body, his head and face were found to be perfectly smooth, without the slightest appearance of hair or beard.

*Cowesass?-tawhich wessaseen? Are you afraid? - why fear you?

Let my father ask his God to make

A dance and a feast for a great sagamore, When he paddles across the western lake

With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore. Cowesass CowesasS - tawhich wessaseen

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Let my father die like Bomazeen!"

Through the chapel's narrow doors,

And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls;
While at his side the Norridgewock,
With failing breath, essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes -
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies.

"So fare all eaters of the frog! Death to the Babylonish dog!

Down with the beast of Rome!"

With shouts like these, around the dead,
Unconscious on his bloody bed,

The rangers crowding come.

Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear

The unfeeling taunt the brutal jeer ;

-

Spurn - for he sees ye not-in wrath,
The symbol of your Saviour's death;

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Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal,
And trample, as a thing accursed,
The cross he cherished in the dust:

The dead man cannot feel!

Brutal alike in deed and word,

With callous heart and hand of strife, How like a fiend may man be made, Plying the foul and monstrous trade Whose harvest-field is human life,

?

Whose sickle is the reeking sword!
Quenching, with reckless hand, in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in!

Oh! by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,

By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,

And flowing with its crystal river-
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white, Glimpses on the soldiers' sight

A thing of human shape I ween,

For a moment only seen,

With its loose hair backward streaming,

And its eyeballs madly gleaming,

Shrieking, like a soul in pain,

From the world of light and breath,

Hurrying to its place again,

Spectre-like it vanisheth!

Wretched girl! one eye alone

Notes the way which thou hast gone.

That great Eye, which slumbers never,

Watching o'er a lost world ever,

Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut's root,
Peering in the she wolf's den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake
Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,

Smooth and cold against thy tread

Purposeless, thy mazy way

Threading through the lingering day.
And at night securely sleeping

Where the dogwood's dews are weeping!
Still, though earth and man discard thee,
Doth thy heavenly Father guard thee-
He who spared the guilty Cain,
Even when a brother's blood,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth ;
Wanderer of the wilderness,

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Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild, He regardeth thy distress,

And careth for his sinful child!

'Tis spring time on the eastern hills!
Like torrents gush the summer rills;
Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves
The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
And glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks

The blue eye of the violet looks;

The south-west wind is warmly blowing, And odors from the springing grass, The pine-tree and the sassafras,

Are with it on its errands going.

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A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak

A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.

In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.

His step is firm, his eye is keen,

Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.

No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on :
The fire of conquest, and the mood
Of chivalry have

A mournful task is

gone. his

to lay

Within the earth the bones of those

Who perished in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey

Of all unsparing foes.

Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,
Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks,
Dig up their buried tomahawks

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