Perplexed with doubts, and tortured with despair,
Why so dejected at this hopeless sleep?
Nature at last these ruins may repair,
[weep;
When fate's long dream is o'er, and she forgets to
Some real world once more may be assign'd,
Some newborn mansion for the immortal mind!
Farewell, sweet lake; farewell, surrounding woods,
To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray,
Beyond the mountains and beyond the floods,
Beyond the Huron Bay!
Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low,
My trusty bow and arrows by my side,
The cheerful bottle and the venison store;
For long the journey is that I must go,
Without a partner and without a guide."
He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep, Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep!
THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND.
In spite of all the learned have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead,
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
Not so the ancients of these lands:
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares again the joyous feast.*
His imaged birds and painted bowl,
And venison for a journey dressed,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.
The North American Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture; decorating the corpse with wampum, the images of birds, quadrupeds, &c.; and, if that of a warrior, with bows, ar rows, tomahawks, and other military weapons.
His bow for action ready bent,
And arrows with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the old ideas gone.
Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way,
No fraud upon the dead commit;
Observe the swelling turf, and say,
They do not lie, but here they sit.
Here still a lofty rock remains,
On which the curious eye may trace
(Now wasted half by wearing rains)
The fancies of a ruder race.
Here still an aged elm aspires,
Beneath whose far-projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires)
The children of the forest played!
There oft a restless Indian queen
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair),
And many a barbarous form is seen,
To chide the man that lingers there.
By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade!
And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief and pointed spear,
And Reason's self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.
STANZAS OCCASIONED BY LORD BELLAMONT'S, LADY HAY'S, AND OTHER SKELETONS being dug up in Fort George (n. Y.), 1790.
To sleep in peace when life is fled,
Where shall our mouldering bones be laid;
What care can shun (I ask with tears)
The shovels of succeeding years!
Some have maintained, when life is gone,
This frame no longer is our own:
Hence doctors to our tombs repair,
And seize death's slumbering victims there.
Alas! what griefs must man endure !
Not even in forts he rests secure :
Time dims the splendours of a crown,
And brings the loftiest rampart down.
The breath, once gone, no art recalls!
Away we haste to vaulted walls:
Some future whim inverts the plain,
And stars behold our bones again.
Those teeth, dear girls-so much your care-
(With which no ivory can compare),
Like these (that once were Lady Hay's),
May serve the belles of future days.
Then take advice from yonder scull;
And, when the flames of life grow dull,
Leave not a tooth in either jaw,
Since dentists steal-and fear no law.
He that would court a sound repose,
To barren hills and deserts goes:
Where busy hands admit no sun,
Where he may doze till all is done.
Yet there, even there, though slily laid,
"Tis folly to defy the spade;
Posterity invades the hill,
And plants our relics where she will.
But oh! forbear the rising sigh!
All care is past with them that die :
Jove gave, when they to fate resign'd,
An opiate of the strongest kind :
Death is a sleep that has no dreams,
In which all time a moment seems;
And skeletons perceive no pain
Till Nature bids them wake again.
YE Alps audacious, through the heavens that rise, To cramp the day and hide me from the skies; Ye Gallic flags, that o'er their heights unfurl'd, Bear death to kings and freedom to the world, I sing not you. A softer theme I choose, A virgin theme, unconscious of the muse, But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire The purest phrensy of poetic fire.
Despise it not, ye bards to terror steel'd, Who hurl your thunders round the epic field; Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing Joys that the vineyard and the stillhouse bring; Or on some distant fair your notes employ, And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy. I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, My morning incense, and my evening meal, The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl, Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
Its substance mingled, married in with thine,
Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
And save the pains of blowing while I eat.
Oh! could the smooth, the emblematic song
Flow like thy genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they roll in substance, roll in rhyme,
No more thy awkward, unpoetic name
Should shun the muse or prejudice thy fame;
But, rising grateful to the accustom'd ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms revere !
Assist me first with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks of time thy lineage and thy race;
Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore
(Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore),
First gave thee to the world; her works of fame
Have lived indeed, but lived without a name
Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days, [maize,
First learn'd with stones to crack the well-dried
Through the rough sieve to shake the golden shower,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour:
The yellow flour, bestrew'd and stirr'd with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise, like her labours, to the son of song,
To her, to them, I'd consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
Not through the rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol's sweet daughter should be known,
But o'er the world's wide clime should live secure,
Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure.
Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
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