THE CHILD OF THE FORESTS.
WRITTEN AFTER READING THE MEMOIRS OF JOHN HUNTER.
[On one occasion, Mrs Hemans was somewhat ludicrously disenchanted, through the medium of a North American Review, on the subject of a self-constituted hero, whose history (which suggested her little poem, “The Child of the Forests”) she had read with unquestioning faith and lively interest. This was the redoubtable John Dunn Hunter, whose marvellous adventures amongst the Indians—by whom he represented himself to have been carried away in childhood—were worked up into a plausible narrative, admirably calculated to excite the sympathies of its readers. But how far it was really deserving of them, may be judged by the following extract from a letter to a friend who had been similarly mystified:—“I send you a North American Review, which will mortify C. and you with the sad intelligence that John Hunter—even our own John Dunn—the man of the panther’s skin—the adopted of the Kansas—the shooter with the rifle—no, with the long bow—is, I blush to say it, neither more nor less than an impostor; no better than Psalmanazar; no, no better than Carraboo herself. After this, what are we to believe again? Are there any Loo Choo Islands? Was there ever any Robinson Crusoe? Is there any Rammohun Roy? All one’s faith and trust is shaken to its foundations. No one here sympathises with me properly on this annoying occasion; but you, I think, will know how to feel, who have been quite as much devoted to that vile John Dunn as myself.”—Memoir, pp. 95-6.]
Is not thy heart far off amidst the woods,
Where the red Indian lays his father’s dust,
And, by the rushing of the torrent floods,
To the Great Spirit bows in silent trust?
Doth not thy soul o’ersweep the foaming main,
To pour itself upon the wilds again?
They are gone forth, the desert’s warrior race,
By stormy lakes to track the elk and roe;
But where art thou, the swift one in the chase,
With thy free footstep and unfailing bow?
Their singing shafts have reach’d the panther’s lair,
And where art thou?—thine arrows are not there.
They rest beside their streams—the spoil is won—
They hang their spears upon the cypress bough;
The night-fires blaze, the hunter’s work is done—
They hear the tales of old—but where art thou?
The night-fires blaze beneath the giant pine,
And there a place is fill’d that once was thine.
For thou art mingling with the city’s throng,
And thou hast thrown thine Indian bow aside;
Child of the forests! thou art borne along,
E’en as ourselves, by life’s tempestuous tide.
But will this be? and canst thou here find rest?
Thou hadst thy nurture on the desert’s breast.
Comes not the sound of torrents to thine ear
From the savannah land, the land of streams?
Hear’st thou not murmurs which none else may hear?
Is not the forest’s shadow on thy dreams?
They call—wild voices call thee o’er the main,
Back to thy free and boundless woods again.
Hear them not! hear them not!—thou canst not find
In the far wilderness what once was thine!
Thou hast quaff’d knowledge from the founts of mind,
And gather’d loftier aims and hopes divine.
Thou know’st the soaring thought, the immortal strain—
Seek not the deserts and the woods again!