"Let my father find the winter snow The wolves are eating the Norridgewock; Fearfully over the Jesuit's face, Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace, And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud On the Virgin and her Son; For terrible thoughts his memory crowd Of scalps brought home by his savage flock No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, CowesasS tawhich wessaseen ? * 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? Let my father die like Bomazeen!" Through the chapel's narrow doors, And through each window in the walls, The deadly shower of English balls. "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, The rangers crowding come. Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear 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! Oh by the widow's sore distress, By the fell discord of the Pit, And flowing with its crystal river Nor Christian bards his glories tell, 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, Smooth and cold against thy tread Purposeless, thy mazy way Threading through the lingering day. Where the dogwood's dews are weeping! Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild, He regardeth thy distress, And careth for his sinful child! 'Tis spring time on the eastern hills! 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. A band is marching through the wood And with them one whose bearded cheek, 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, No purpose now of strife and blood A mournful task is his to lay Within the earth the bones of those Who perished in that fearful day, Sadly and still, dark thoughts between, |