Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete






III. THE DAUGHTER.

     The soot-black brows of men, the yell
     Of women thronging round the bed,
     The tinkling charm of ring and shell,
     The Powah whispering o'er the dead!

     All these the Sachem's home had known,
     When, on her journey long and wild
     To the dim World of Souls, alone,
     In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.

     Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling
     They laid her in the walnut shade,
     Where a green hillock gently swelling
     Her fitting mound of burial made.
     There trailed the vine in summer hours,
     The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,—
     On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
     Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!

     The Indian's heart is hard and cold,
     It closes darkly o'er its care,
     And formed in Nature's sternest mould,
     Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
     The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
     Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,
     And still, in battle or in chase,
     Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his
     foremost tread.

     Yet when her name was heard no more,
     And when the robe her mother gave,
     And small, light moccasin she wore,
     Had slowly wasted on her grave,
     Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
     Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
     No other shared his lonely bed,
     No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.

     A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes
     The tempest-smitten tree receives
     From one small root the sap which climbs
     Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,
     So from his child the Sachem drew
     A life of Love and Hope, and felt
     His cold and rugged nature through
     The softness and the warmth of her young
     being melt.

     A laugh which in the woodland rang
     Bemocking April's gladdest bird,—
     A light and graceful form which sprang
     To meet him when his step was heard,—
     Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
     Small fingers stringing bead and shell
     Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,—
     With these the household-god had graced
     his wigwam well.

     Child of the forest! strong and free,
     Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
     She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
     Or struck the flying bird in air.
     O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
     Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
     And dazzling in the summer noon
     The blade of her light oar threw off its shower
     of spray!

     Unknown to her the rigid rule,
     The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
     The weary torture of the school,
     The taming of wild nature down.
     Her only lore, the legends told
     Around the hunter's fire at night;
     Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
     Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned
     in her sight.

     Unknown to her the subtle skill
     With which the artist-eye can trace
     In rock and tree and lake and hill
     The outlines of divinest grace;
     Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,
     Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway;
     Too closely on her mother's breast
     To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!

     It is enough for such to be
     Of common, natural things a part,
     To feel, with bird and stream and tree,
     The pulses of the same great heart;
     But we, from Nature long exiled,
     In our cold homes of Art and Thought
     Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
     Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels
     them not.

     The garden rose may richly bloom
     In cultured soil and genial air,
     To cloud the light of Fashion's room
     Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair;
     In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
     The sweetbrier on the hillside shows
     Its single leaf and fainter hue,
     Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!

     Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
     Their mingling shades of joy and ill
     The instincts of her nature threw;
     The savage was a woman still.
     Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
     Heart-colored prophecies of life,
     Rose on the ground of her young dreams
     The light of a new home, the lover and the wife.

All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg