Classic Poem

FAIN would I tell a tale of Wyoming
In days long past. There was a rural home,
Lonely, yet pleasant, near whose door a brook,
Where water-cresses grew, went singing by.
In its small garden, many a cultured bush
Of ripening berries mingled here and there
With spicy herbs, sage and the bee-loved thyme,
While through thick boughs the blushing apple peer'd,
Betokening thrift and comfort.
Once, as closed
The autumn-day, the mother by her side
Held her young children, with her storied lore.
Fast by her chair, a bold and bright-eyed boy
Stood statue-like, while closer, at her feet,
Sate his two gentle sisters. One, a girl
Of some seven summers, youngest, and most loved
For her prolonged and feeble infancy.
She lean'd upon her mother's lap, and look'd
Into her face with an intense regard,
And the quick, intermitting sob that shows
The listening spirit.
Pale she was, and fair,
And so exceeding fragile, that the name
Given by her wilder playmates, at their sports,
Of “Lily of the Vale,” seem'd well bestow'd.
The mother told them of her native clime,
Her own, beloved New-England; of the school,
Where many children o'er their lessons bent,
Each mindful of the rules, to read, or spell,
Or ply the needle at the appointed hour;
And how they serious sate, with folded hands,
When the good mistress through her spectacles
Explain'd the Bible.
Of the church she spake,
With snowy spire, by elms o'er-canopied;
And how the sweet bell, on the Sabbath morn,
Summon'd from every home the people forth,
All neatly clad, and with a reverent air,
Children by parents led, to worship God.
Absorb'd in such recital, ever mix'd
By that maternal lip with precepts pure
Of love to God and man, they scarcely mark'd
A darkening shadow o'er the casement steal,
Until the savage footstep and the flash
Of tomahawk appall'd them.
Swift as thought
They fled, through dell and thicket, closely track'd
By grim pursuers. The frail mother, tax'd
With the loved burden of her youngest born,
Moved slowest, and they cleft her fiercely down;
Yet with that impulse which doth sometimes move
The sternest purpose of the red man's breast
To a capricious mercy, spared the child.
Her little struggling limbs, her streaming eyes
Averted from the captors, her shrill cry
Stealing in fitful echoes from afar,
Deepen'd the mother's death-pang.
Eve drew on,
And from his toil the husband and the sire
Turn'd wearied home. With wondering thought he mark'd
No little feet came forth to welcome him;
No Lily of the Vale, who first of all
Was wont to espy him.
Through the house he rush'd
Empty and desolate, and down the wild.
There lay his wife, all weltering in her blood,
Upon the trampled grass. In vain he bore
The form of marble to its couch, and strove
Once more to vivify that spark of life
Which ruthless rage had quench'd.
On that dread hour
Of utter desolation, broke a cry,
“Oh, father! father!” and around his neck
Two weeping children wound their trembling arms,
Saved mid the thicket's tangled depths, to share
The burden of his wo.
With tireless zeal,
That sad dismember'd household sought the child
Reft from their arms, and oft with shuddering thought
Revolved the horrors that must mark her lot,
If life were hers. And when the father lay
In his last, mortal sickness, he enjoin'd
His children never to remit their search
For the lost Lily.
Years roll'd on their course;
The boy became a man, and o'er his brow
Stole the white, sprinkled hairs. Around his hearth
Were children's children, and one pensive friend,
His melancholy sister, night and day
Mourning the lost. At length, a rumour came
Of a white woman found in Indian tents,
Far, far away. A father's dying words
Came o'er the husbandman, and up he rose,
And took his sad-eyed sister by the hand,
Blessing his household, as he bade farewell,
For their uncertain pilgrimage.
They prest
O'er cloud-capp'd mounts, through forests dense with shade,
O'er bridgeless rivers, swoln to torrents hoarse,
O'er prairies like the never-ending sea,
Following the chart that had been dimly traced
By stranger-guide.
At length they reach'd a lodge
Deep in the wilderness, beside whose door
A wrinkled woman with the Saxon brow
Sate coarsely mantled in her blanket-robe,
The Indian pipe between her shrivell'd lips.
Yet in her blue eye dwelt a gleam of thought,
A hidden memory, whose electric force
Thrill'd to the fount of being, and reveal'd
The kindred drops that had so long wrought out
A separate channel.
With affection's haste
The sister clasp'd her neck. “Oh lost and found!
Lily! dear sister! praise to God above!”
Then in wild sobs her trembling voice was lost.
The brother drew her to his side, and bent
A long and tender gaze into the depths
Of her clear eye. That glance unseal'd the scroll
Of many years. Yet no responding tear
Moisten'd her cheek, nor did she stretch her arms
To answer their embrace.
“Oh, Lily! love!
For whom this heart so many years hath kept
Its dearest place,” the sister's voice resumed,
“Hast thou forgot the home, the grassy bank
Where we have play'd? The blessed mother's voice
Bidding us love each other? and the prayer
With which our father at the evening hour
Commended us to God?”
Slowly she spake:
“I do remember, dimly, as a dream,
A brook, a garden, and two children fair,
A loving mother with a bird-like voice,
Teaching us goodness; then a trace of blood,
A groan of death, a lonely captive's pain;
But all are past away.
Here is my home,
These are my daughters.
If ye ask for him,
The eagle-eyed and lion-hearted chief,
My fearless husband, who the battle led,
There is his grave.”
“Go back, and dwell with us,
Back to thy people, to thy father's God,”
The brother said. “I have a happy home,
A loving wife and children. Thou shalt be
Welcome to all. And these, thy daughters too,
The dark-eyed and the raven-hair'd, shall be
Unto me as mine own. My heart doth yearn
O'er thee, our hapless mother's dearest one.
Let my sweet home be thine.”
A trembling nerve
Thrill'd all unwonted at her bosom's core,
And her lip blanch'd. But the two daughters gazed
Reproachfully upon her, to their cheek
Rushing the proud Miami chieftain's blood,
In haughty silence. So, she wept no tears;
The moveless spirit of the race she loved
Had come upon her, and her features show'd
Slight touch of sympathy.
“Upon my head
Rest sixty winters. Scarcely seven were past
Among the pale-faced people. Hate they not
The red man in their heart? Smooth Christian words
They speak, but from their touch we fade away
As from the poisonous snake.
Have I not said
Here is my home? and yonder is the bed
Of the Miami chief? Two sons who bore
His brow, rest on his pillow.
Shall I turn
My back upon my dead, and bear the curse
Of the great Spirit?”
Through their feathery plumes,
Her dark-eyed daughters mute approval gave
To these stern words.
Yet still, with faithful zeal,
The brother and the sister waited long
In patient hope. If on her brow they traced
Aught like relenting, fondly they implored,
“Oh Lily! go with us!” and every tale
That pour'd o'er childhood's days a flood of light
Had the same whisper'd burden.
Oft they walk'd
Beside her, when the twilight's tender hour,
Or the young moonlight, blendeth kindred hearts
So perfectly together. But in vain;
For with the stony eye of prejudice,
Which gathereth coldness from an angel's smile.
She look'd upon their love.
And so they left
Their pagan sister in her Indian home,
And to their native vale of Wyoming
Turn'd mournful back. There, often steep'd in tears,
At morn or evening, rose the earnest prayer,
That God would keep in their lost Lily's soul
The seed her mother sow'd, and by His grace
So water it that they might meet in heaven.