One instant a ghastly terror A guttural answer broke: "I come from the great Three Rivers, I am chief of the Roanoke." Straight in through the frightened children, And loosed on the blazing hearthstone, With a look as serene and mild As if it had been his cradle, Stepped softly a four-year child. As he chafed at the fire his fingers, Bent on him was strange to see; "They weep for the boy in the wigwam: To break with the plough the sod; "I give thee my hand!" And the lady This night when the dear Lord's Mother Next morn from the colony belfry And merrily forth the people Flocked, keeping the Christmas time; And the chief in his skins and wampum, Forthwith from the congregation "Out! out! with the crafty red-skin! And quickly from belts leaped daggers, And swords from their sheaths flashed bare, And men from their seats defiant Sprang, ready to slay him there. But facing the crowd with courage Stepped bravely the fair-browed woman And spake with a queenly gesture, Her hand on the chief's brown breast; They dropped, at her word, their weapons, And told them the red man's story, And showed them the red man's child; The trust that a Christian woman Had shown on a Christmas Day! There'll come a day when human love, the sweetest Of God's grand giving-sovereignest, completest- There'll come a day-I shall not care how passes If only, lark-like, from earth's nested grasses, William Allen Butler. BORN in Albany, N. Y., 1825. UHLAND. [Poems. 1871.] T is the poet Uhland, from whose wreathings IT Of rarest harmony I here repeat, In lower tones and less melodious breathings, Some simple strains where truth and passion meet. His is the poetry of sweet expression, Of clear, unfaltering tune, serene and strong; Where gentlest thoughts and words, in soft procession, Move to the even measures of his song. Delighting ever in his own calm fancies, He sees much beauty where most men see naught, Looking at Nature with familiar glances, And weaving garlands in the groves of Thought. He sings of Youth, and Hope, and high Endeavor, He sings of Fatherland, the minstrel's glory, In ballads breathing many a dim tradition, Nourished in long belief, or minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old Romance, whose gentle mission Passed from the earth before our wiser times. Well do they know his name amongst the mountains, Of his clear thought, with rainbow fancies spanned. His simple lays oft sings the mother cheerful, Beside the cradle, in the dim twilight; The hillside swain, the reaper in the meadows, O precious gift! O wondrous inspiration! Catches the echo from the sounding strings. Out of the depths of feeling and emotion Wide is its magic world,-divided neither mm John Williamson Palmer. BORN in Baltimore, Md., 1825. STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY. [Written at Oakland, Md., 17 September, 1862, within hearing of the Guns of Antietam. -From the Author's revised Manuscript.] |