Classic Poem

PART I

I

O N Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wall
And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall,
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore!

II

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies
The happy shepherd swains had nought to do
But feed their flocks on green declivities,
Or skim, perchance, thy lake with light canoe
From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew
With timbrel when, beneath the forests brown,
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew;
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town.

III

Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes,
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men:
While hearkening, fearing nought their revelry,
The wild-deer arched his neck from glades, and then
Unhunted sought his woods and wilderness again.

IV

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime
Heard, but in transatlantic story rung,
For here the exile met from every clime,
And spoke in friendship every distant tongue:
Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung
Were but divided by the running brook;
And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,
On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook,
The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook.

V

Nor far some Andalusian saraband
Would sound to many a native roundelay:
But who is he that yet a dearer land
Remembers, over hills and far away?
Green Albin! what though he no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,
Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,
And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar?

VI

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,
That want's stern edict e'er, and feudal grief,
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home, and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:
And England sent her men, of men the chief,
Who taught those sires of Empire yet to be
To plant the tree of life, — to plant fair Freedom's tree!

VII

Here was not mingled in the city's pomp
Of life's extremes the grandeur and the gloom;
Judgement awoke not here her dismal tromp,
Nor sealed in blood a fellow-creature's doom,
Nor mourned the captive in a living tomb.
One venerable man, beloved of all,
Sufficed, where innocence was yet in bloom,
To sway the strife that seldom might befall:
And Albert was their judge in patriarchal hall.

VIII

How reverend was the look, serenely aged,
He bore, this gentle Pennsylvanian sire,
Where all but kindly fervours were assuaged,
Undimmed by weakness' shade, or turbid ire!
And though, amidst the calm of thought entire,
Some high and haughty features might betray
A soul impetuous once, 'twas earthly fire
That fled composure's intellectual ray,
As Etna's fires grow dim before the rising day.

IX

I boast no song in magic wonders rife,
But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize,
Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?
And dwells in daylight truth's salubrious skies
No form with which the soul may sympathize? —
Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild
The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,
An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,
Or blest his noonday walk; she was his only child.

X

The rose of England bloomed on Gertrude's cheek.
What though these shades had seen her birth? her sire
A Briton's independence taught to seek
Far western worlds; and there his household fire
The light of social love did long inspire,
And many a halcyon day he lived to see
Unbroken but by one misfortune dire,
When fate had reft his mutual heart: but she
Was gone; and Gertrude climbed a widowed father's knee —

XI

A loved bequest! and I may half impart
To them that feel the strong paternal tie,
How like a new existence to his heart
That living flower uprose beneath his eye,
Dear as she was, from cherub infancy,
From hours when she would round his garden play,
To time when, as the ripening years went by,
Her lovely mind could culture well repay;
And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day.

XII

I may not paint those thousand infant charms
(Unconscious fascination, undesigned);
The orison repeated in his arms
For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con
(The playmate ere the teacher of her mind):
All uncompanioned else her heart had gone
Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone.

XIII

And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,
When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,
An Indian from his bark approach their bower,
Of buskined limb, and swarthy lineament;
The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,
And bracelets bound the arm that helped to light
A boy, who seemed, as he beside him went,
Of Christian vesture, and complexion bright,
Led by his dusky guide, like morning brought by night.

XIV

Yet pensive seemed the boy for one so young —
The dimple from his polished cheek had fled;
When, leaning on his forest-bow unstrung,
The Oneyda warrior to the planter said,
And laid his hand upon the stripling's head,
" Peace be to thee! my words this belt approve;
The paths of peace my steps have hither led:
This little nursling, take him to thy love,
And shield the bird unfledged, since gone the parent dove.

XV

" Christian! I am the foeman of thy foe;
Our wampum league thy brethren did embrace:
Upon the Michagan, three moons ago,
We launched our pirogues for the bison chace.
And with the Hurons planted for a space,
With true and faithful hands, the olive-stalk;
But snakes are in the bosoms of their race,
And though they held with us a friendly talk
The hollow peace-tree fell beneath their tomahawk.

XVI

" It was encamping on the lake's far port
A cry of Areouski broke our sleep,
Where stormed an ambushed foe thy nation's fort,
And rapid, rapid whoops came o'er the deep;
But long thy country's war-sign on the steep
Appeared through ghastly intervals of light,
And deathfully their thunders seemed to sweep,
Till utter darkness swallowed up the sight,
As if a shower of blood had quenched the fiery fight.

XVII

" It slept — it rose again — on high their tower
Sprung upwards like a torch to light the skies;
Then down again it rained an ember shower,
And louder lamentations heard we rise:
As, when the evil Manitou that dries
The Ohio woods consumes them in his ire,
In vain the desolated panther flies,
And howls amidst his wilderness of fire:
Alas! too late, we reached and smote those Hurons dire!

XVIII

" But, as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle-brand;
And from the tree we, with her child, unbound
A lonely mother of the Christian land: —
Her lord — the captain of the British band —
Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay.
Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand;
Upon her child she sobbed, and swooned away,
Or shrieked unto the God to whom the Christians pray.

XIX

" Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls
Of fever-balm and sweet sagamite:
But she was journeying to the land of souls,
And lifted up her dying head to pray
That we should bid an ancient friend convey
Her orphan to his home of England's shore;
And take, she said, this token far away
To one that will remember us of yore,
When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave's Julia wore.

XX

" And I, the eagle of my tribe, have rushed
With this lorn dove." — A sage's self-command
Had quelled the tears from Albert's heart that gushed;
But yet his cheek — his agitated hand
That showered upon the stranger of the land
No common boon — in grief but ill beguiled
A soul that was not wont to be unmanned;
" And stay", he cried, " dear pilgrim of the wild,
Preserver of my old, my boon companion's child! —

XXI

" Child of a race whose name my bosom warms,
On earth's remotest bounds how welcome here!
Whose mother oft, a child, has filled these arms
Young as thyself, and innocently dear;
Whose grandsire was my early life's compeer.
Ah, happiest home of England's happy clime!
How beautiful e'en now thy scenes appear,
As in the noon and sunshine of my prime!
How gone like yesterday these thrice ten years of time!

XXII

" And, Julia! when thou wert like Gertrude now,
Can I forget thee, favourite child of yore?
Or thought I, in thy father's house when thou
Wert lightest-hearted on his festive floor,
And first of all his hospitable door
To meet and kiss me at my journey's end —
But where was I when Waldegrave was no more?
And thou didst, pale, thy gentle head extend
In woes, that e'en the tribe of deserts was thy friend?"

XXIII

He said — and strained unto his heart the boy;
Far differently the mute Oneyda took
His calumet of peace and cup of joy;
As monumental bronze unchanged his look;
A soul that pity touched, but never shook;
Trained from his tree-rocked cradle to his bier
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
Impassive — fearing but the shame of fear —
A stoic of the woods — a man without a tear.

XXIV

Yet deem not goodness on the savage stock
Of Outalissi's heart disdained to grow;
As lives the oak unwithered on the rock
By storms above and barrenness below,
He scorned his own, who felt another's woe:
And, ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung,
Or laced his mocasins, in act to go,
A song of parting to the boy he sung,
Who slept on Albert's couch nor heard his friendly tongue.

XXV

" Sleep, wearied one! and in the dreaming land
Shouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet,
Oh! tell her spirit that the white man's hand
Hath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet;
While I in lonely wilderness shall greet
Thy little foot-prints — or by traces know
The fountain where at noon I thought it sweet
To feed thee with the quarry of my bow,
And poured the lotus-horn, or slew the mountain roe.

XXVI

Adieu! sweet scion of the rising sun!
But, should affliction's storms thy blossom mock,
Then come again, my own adopted one!
And I will graft thee on a noble stock:
The crocodile, the condor of the rock,
Shall be the pastime of thy sylvan wars;
And I will teach thee, in the battle's shock,
To pay with Huron blood thy father's scars,
And gratulate his soul rejoicing in the stars!"

XXVII

So finished he the rhyme (howe'er uncouth)
That true to nature's fervid feelings ran
(And song is but the eloquence of truth):
Then forth uprose that lone wayfaring man;
But, dauntless, he nor chart nor journey's plan
In woods required, whose trained eye was keen
As eagle of the wilderness to scan
His path by mountain, swamp, or deep ravine,
Or ken far friendly huts on good savannas green.

XXVIII

Old Albert saw him from the valley's side —
His pirogue launched, his pilgrimage begun,
Far like the red-bird's wing he seemed to glide;
Then dived, and vanished in the woodlands dun.
Oft, to that spot by tender memory won,
Would Albert climb the promontory's height,
If but a dim sail glimmered in the sun;
But never more, to bless his longing sight,
Was Outalissi hailed, with bark and plumage bright.