LINES
Addressed to a Gentleman who had been a Prisoner to the Indians, and was ransomed by the merchants of Detroit.
When furious, eager, and athirst for blood,
The panting Savage roams the howling wood;
Could grace of form his kindled ire assuage,
Or polish’d manners mitigate his rage:
Or moral worth his rugged spirit move
To the soft touch of sympathy and love.
This pow’r, engaging stranger, had been thine,
In whom united worth and sense combine;
But, ah! estrang’d to all the charms of art,
To every gentle virtue of the heart,
When the fell Savage, in that dreadful shade
Where midnight darkness added horror spread.
Stole silent through the deep surrounding gloom,
Intent to finish thy unhappy doom,
Had not some favouring power repell’d the stroke,
His force averted, and his purpose broke.
With Mitchel, hapless youth! thy corse had lain,
Pale and unburied on that fatal plain;
Where torn from early life’s alluring charms,
When hope incites us, and when pleasure warms;
Unnoted, cold, the wretched sufferer lies,
And sleep eternal seals his weeping eyes.
Where now the prospects youth and fortune gave,
A life of honour, a distinguish’d grave?
In hopeless dark oblivion sunk away,
The faint short radiance of a winter’s day!
But thou, preserv’d by ruling heaven’s decree,
A fairer, happier fate attends on thee;
Thine be a life of honourable ease,
Still pleas’d and tranquil, as secure to please,
The duteous children, the unblemish’d wife,
And all the dear regards of social life;
And in thy tranquil days serene decline;
The peace of conscious rectitude be thine.
MATILDA.
Montreal.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.