XVII.
’Twas now the early twilight hour,
That kindly comes with soothing power
To calm the day’s tumultuous strife,
And smooth the stormy waves of life.
Nemattanow, with thoughtful eye
Fix’d on the changeful evening sky,
Lean’d him against an aged tree,
Whose top for many a century
Had bathed in the earliest beams of day
And felt the sun’s last setting ray.
Out on a gentle hill-side stood
This aged monarch of the wood,
Whence Powhatan’s gray lodge was seen,
His fields, and groves, and valleys green;
And the younger trees on the sloping brow
Around this old trunk seem’d to bow,
As if it had a right to be
The ruler of their destiny.
The monarch loved this relic old
Of other days; perhaps the hold
It had upon his heart arose
From the charm similitude bestows,
For the scenes of life around it thrown
Seem’d but the shadowing of his own.