Page images
PDF
EPUB

CXI.-NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

FROM SPRAGUE.

1. Nor many generations ago, where you now sit, *encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here, lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his *dusky mate. Here, the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, and the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now, they dipped their noble limbs in your *sedgy lakes, and now, they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here, they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger-strife was over, here, curled the smoke of peace.

2. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the *universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid *warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired *pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent in humble, though blind adoration.

3. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a *pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face, a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there, a

stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamable *progenitors. The Indian of *falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawls upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

4. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast fading to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the *structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their texterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues, as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate, as a people.

CXII. RED JACKET, THE INDIAN CHIEF.
FROM HALLECK.

FITZ GREENE HALLECK, a native of Connecticut; he has written little. but ranks high among American poets.

ROB ROY and ROBIN HOOD; celebrated outlaws, the one of Scotland, the other of England. UPAS;- a poisonous tree which grows in India.

1. THOU wert a monarch born. Tradition's pages
Tell not the planting of thy parent tree,
But that the forest tribe have bent for ages,
To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

2. Thy name is princely, though no pcet's magic
Could make Red Jacket grace an English rhyme,
Unless he had a genius for the tragic,
And introduced it into pantomime.

3. Yet it is music in the language spoken
Of thine own land; and on her herald roll,

As nobly fought for, and as proud a token
As 'CŒUR DE LION's, of a warrior's soul.

4. Thy +garh-though Austria's bosom-star would frighten
That metal pale, as diamonds the dark mine,

And George the Fourth wore in the dance at Brighton,
A more becoming evening dress than thine;

5. Yet 't is a brave one, scorning wind and weather,
And fitted for a couch on field and flood,

As Rob Roy's tartan for the Highland *heather,
Or forest green for England's Robin Hood.
6. Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings-the Argo's gallant sailors,
+Heroes in history, and gods in song.

7. Is eloquence? Her spell is thine, that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches-
The secret of their mastery-they are short.

8. Is beauty? Thine has with thy youth departed;
But the love-legends of thy manhood's years,
And she who perished, young and broken-hearted,
Are-but I rhyme for smiles, and not for tears.
9. The monarch mind,—the mystery of commanding,
The godlike power, the art Napoleon,

Of winning, fettering, molding, wielding, banding,
The hearts of millions till they move as one;

10. Thou hast it. At thy bidding, men have crowded
The road to death as to a festival;

And minstrel-minds, without a blush, have shrouded
With banner-folds of glory, their dark pall.

11 Who will believe-not I-for in deceiving

Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream;
I can not spare the luxury of believing

That all things beautiful are what they seem:

12. Who would believe that, with a smile whose blessing Would, like the *patriarch's, soothe a dying hour, With voice as low, as gentle, as *caressing,

As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlight bower;

1 Cœur de Lion, (pro. Kur de Lee'on,) lion-hearted, a name given to Richard I, of England.

13. With look, like patient Job's, *eschewing evil;
With motion's graceful as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the †veriest devil,

That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair?

14. That in thy veins there springs a poison fountain,
Deadlier than that which bathes the Upas-tree:
And, in thy wrath, a nursing cat o' mountain

Is calm as her babe's sleep compared with thee?
15. And, underneath that face, like summer ocean's,
Its lips as moveless, and its cheek as clear,
Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions,

Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow,—all, save fear.
16. Love for thy land, as if she were thy daughter,
Her pipe in peace, her tomahawk in wars;
Hatred of missionaries and cold water;

Pride-in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars;

17. Hope that thy wrongs will be, by the Great Spirit,
Remembered and revenged, when thou art gone;
Sorrow-that none are left thee to inherit

Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne.

CXIII. THE TWINS.

FROM WILSON.

MANSE; a clergyman's house.

1. THE Kirk of Auchindown stands, with its burialground, on a little, green hill, surrounded by an irregular and straggling village, or rather about a hundred *hamlets clustering round it, with their fields and gardens. A few of these gardens come close up to the church-yard wall, and, in spring-time, many of the fruit-trees hang, rich and beautiful, over the adjacent graves. The voices and the laughter of the children at play on the green before the parish school, or their composed murmur, when at their various lessons together in the room, may be distinctly heard all over the burial-ground. So may the song of the maidens going to the well; while all around, the singing of birds is thick and hurried; and a small rivulet, as if brought there to be an

*emblem of passing time, glides away beneath the mossy wall, murmuring continually a dream-like tune round the dwellings of the dead.

2. In the quiet of the evening, my venerable friend took me with him into the church-yard. We walked to the eastern corner, where, as we approached, I saw a monument standing almost by itself, and, even at that distance, appearing to be of a somewhat different character from any other in the burial-ground. And now we stood close to, and before it. It was a low monument of the purest white marble; simple, but perfectly elegant and graceful withal, and upon its unadorned slab, lay the sculptured images of two children asleep in each other's arms.

3. Around it, was a small piece of the greenest ground, without the protection of any rail, but obviously belonging to the monument. It shone, without offending them, among simpler or ruder burial-beds round about it; and, although the costliness of the materials, the affecting beauty of the design, and the delicacy of its execution, all showed that there slept the offspring neither of the poor nor low in life, yet so meekly and sadly did it lift up its unstained little walls, and so well did its unusual elegance meet and blend with the character of the common tombs, that no heart could see it without sympathy, and without owning, that it was a pathetic ornament of a place, filled with the ruder memorials of the very humblest dead.

4. "Six years ago," said my venerable companion, "I was an old man, and wished to have silence and stillness in my house, that my communion with Him before whom I expected every day to be called, might be undisturbed. Accordingly, my Manse, that used to ring with boyish *glee, was now quiet; when, a lady, elegant, graceful, beautiful, young, and a widow, came to my dwelling, and her soft, sweet, silver voice, told me that she was from England. She was the +relict of an officer slain in war; and having heard one who had lived in my house, speak of his happy and innocent time there, she earnestly requested me to receive beneath my roof, her two sons. She, herself, lived with the bed-ridden mother of her dead husband; and anxious for the growing minds of her boys, she sought to commit them, for a short time, to my

« PreviousContinue »