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The widowed mothers and their brood:
Oft, in despair, for drink and food
We vainly cried, they heeded not,
But with sharp lash the captives smote.

"Three days we tracked that dreary wild, Where thirst and anguish pressed us sore;

And many a mother and her child
Lay down to rise no more:
Behind us, on the desert brown,

We saw the vultures swooping down;
And heard, as the grim night was falling,
The gorged wolf to his comrade calling.

"At length was heard a river sounding
Midst that dry and dismal land,
And, like a troop of wild deer bounding,
We hurried to its strand;

Among the maddened cattle rushing,
The crowd behind still forward pushing,
Till in the flood our limbs were drenched,
And the fierce rage of thirst was quenched.

"Hoarse-roaring, dark, the broad Gareep
In turbid streams was sweeping fast,
Huge sea-cows in its eddies deep
Loud snorting as we passed;

But that relentless robber clan

Right through those waters wild and wan
Drove on like sheep our captive host,

Nor staid to rescue wretches lost.

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"All shivering from the foaming flood,

We stood upon the stranger's ground, When, with proud looks and gestures rude, The white men gathered round:

And there, like cattle from the fold,
By Christians we were bought and sold,
Midst laughter loud and looks of scorn,-
And roughly from each other torn.

"My mother's scream, so long and shrill, My little sister's wailing cry,

(In dreams I often hear them still!)
Rose wildly to the sky.

A tiger's heart came to me then,
And madly 'mong those ruthless men
I sprang ! Alas! dashed on the sand,
Bleeding, they bound me foot and hand.

66

Away-away on bounding steeds

The white man-stealers fleetly go,

Through long low valleys fringed with reeds,
O'er mountains capped with snow,

Each with his captive, far and fast;
Until yon rock-bound ridge was passed,
And distant stripes of cultured soil
Bespoke the land of tears and toil.

"And tears and toil have been my lot

Since I the white man's thrall became,

And sorer griefs I wish forgot

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Harsh blows and burning shame.

Oh, English chief! thou ne'er canst know
The injured bondman's bitter woe,

When round his heart, like scorpions, cling Black thoughts, that madden while they sting?

"Yet this hard fate I might have borne, And taught in time my soul to bend, Had my sad yearning breast forlorn

But found a single friend:

My race extinct or far removed,

The boor's rough brood I could have loved-
But each to whom my bosom turned
Even like a hound the black boy spurned!

"While friendless thus, my master's flocks
I tended on the upland waste,

It chanced this fawn leapt from the rocks,
By wolfish wild-dogs chased:

I rescued it, though wounded sore,
All dabbled with its mother's gore,
And nursed it in a cavern wild
Until it loved me like a child.

"Gently I nursed it; for I thought (Its hapless fate so like to mine) By good Utika it was brought,

To bid me not repine

Since in this world of wrong and ill
One creature lived to love me still,
Although its dark and dazzling eye
Beamed not with human sympathy.

“Thus lived I, a lone orphan lad,

My task the proud boor's flocks to tend;
And this pet fawn was all I had

To love, or call my friend;
When, suddenly, with haughty look
And taunting words, that tyrant took
My playmate for his pampered boy,
Who envied me my only joy.

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'High swelled my heart!-But when the star Of midnight gleamed, I softly led

My bounding favourite forth, and far
Into the Desert fled.

And there, from human kind exiled,
Four moons on roots and berries wild
I've fared—and braved the beasts of prey
To 'scape from spoilers worse than they.

"But yester morn a Bushman brought
The tidings that thy tents were here,
And now rejoicingly I've sought
Thy presence, void of fear;
Because they say, O English chief,
Thou scornest not the captive's grief:
Then let me serve thee, as thine own,
For I am in the world alone!"

Such was Marossi's touching tale,

Our breasts they were not made of stone

His words, his winning looks prevail

We took him for "our own:"

And one, with woman's gentle art,
Unlocked the fountains of his heart,
And love gushed forth, till he became
Her child-in every thing but name.

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

AN AMERICAN LEGEND.

BY THOMAS MOORE.

"THEY made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She'll paddle her white canoe.

"And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear ;

Long and loving our life shall be,

And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of Death is near!"

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds -
His path was rugged and sore,

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
And many a fen, where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

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