AROUND Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.
Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.
And odors from the springing grass,
The sweet birch and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scattered everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness,
What reek the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this?
The turf's red stain is yet undried,
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago's wooded side;
And silent now the hunters stand,
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the vernal air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coiled and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide,—
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tasselled garb of skins arrayed,
And girded with his wampum-braid.
The silver cross he loved is pressed
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarred and naked breast.
'T is done: the roots are backward sent,
The beechen-tree stands up unbent,
The Indian's fitting monument!
When of that sleeper's broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place,
Which knew them once, retains no trace;
Oh, long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head,
A green memorial of the dead!
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn undertone shall make!
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers blow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever pressed,—
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed?
What though the bigot's ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer.
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound,—
And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man's frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O peeled and hunted and reviled,
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature's God, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known,—
The hidden language traced thereon;
Who from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;
Not with our partial eye shall scan,
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban,
The spirit of our brother man!
1841.
ST. JOHN.
The fierce rivalry between Charles de La Tour, a Protestant, and D'Aulnay Charnasy, a Catholic, for the possession of Acadia, forms one of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. La Tour received aid in several instances from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was attacked by D'Aulnay, and successfully defended by its high-spirited mistress. A second attack however followed in the fourth month, 1647, when D'Aulnay was successful, and the garrison was put to the sword. Lady La Tour languished a few days in the hands of her enemy, and then died of grief.
"To the winds give our banner!
Bear homeward again!"
Cried the Lord of Acadia,
Cried Charles of Estienne;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From its bed in the ocean,
Streamed up the St. John.
O'er the blue western waters
That shallop had passed,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviour had looked
On the heretic sail,
As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.
The pale, ghostly fathers
Remembered her well,
And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell;
But the men of Monhegan,
Of Papists abhorred,
Had welcomed and feasted
The heretic Lord.
They had loaded his shallop
With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemaquid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.
And the prayers of the elders
Had followed his way,
As homeward he glided,
Down Pentecost Bay.
Oh, well sped La Tour
For, in peril and pain,
His lady kept watch,
For his coming again.
O'er the Isle of the Pheasant
The morning sun shone,
On the plane-trees which shaded
The shores of St. John.
"Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love!
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above?"
Dark and wild, from his deck
St. Estienne gazed about,
On fire-wasted dwellings,
And silent redoubt;
From the low, shattered walls
Which the flame had o'errun,
There floated no banner,
There thundered no gun!
But beneath the low arch
Of its doorway there stood
A pale priest of Rome,
In his cloak and his hood.
With the bound of a lion,
La Tour sprang to land,
On the throat of the Papist
He fastened his hand.
"Speak, son of the Woman
Of scarlet and sin!
What wolf has been prowling
My castle within?"
From the grasp of the soldier
The Jesuit broke,
Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
He smiled as he spoke:
"No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
Has ravaged thy hall,
But thy red-handed rival,
With fire, steel, and ball!
On an errand of mercy
I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle
Yet spouted with flame.
"Pentagoet's dark vessels
Were moored in the bay,
Grim sea-lions, roaring
Aloud for their prey."
"But what of my lady?"
Cried Charles of Estienne.
"On the shot-crumbled turret
Thy lady was seen:
"Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud,
Her hand grasped thy pennon,
While her dark tresses swayed
In the hot breath of cannon!
But woe to the heretic,
Evermore woe!
When the son of the church
And the cross is his foe!
"In the track of the shell,
In the path of the ball,
Pentagoet swept over
The breach of the wall!
Steel to steel, gun to gun,
One moment,—and then
Alone stood the victor,
Alone with his men!
"Of its sturdy defenders,
Thy lady alone
Saw the cross-blazoned banner
Float over St. John."
"Let the dastard look to it!"
Cried fiery Estienne,
"Were D'Aulnay King Louis,
I'd free her again!"
"Alas for thy lady!
No service from thee
Is needed by her
Whom the Lord hath set free;
Nine days, in stern silence,
Her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came,
And Death opened her door!"
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour staggered back;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again.
"We cruise now for vengeance!
Give way!" cried Estienne.
"Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot's wrong,
And from island and creekside
Her fishers shall throng!
Pentagoet shall rue
What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan's gun!"
Oh, the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o'er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him:
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John!
1841
THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.
Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor. The traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent and motionless under the tree, patiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.
THEY sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress-tree about,
And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,
Their failing eyes looked out.
Gray Age and Sickness waiting there
Through weary night and lingering day,—
Grim as the idols at their side,
And motionless as they.
Unheeded in the boughs above
The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;
Unseen of them the island flowers
Bloomed brightly at their feet.
O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
The thunder crashed on rock and hill;
The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed,
Yet there they waited still!
What was the world without to them?
The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance
Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam
Of battle-flag and lance?
They waited for that falling leaf
Of which the wandering Jogees sing:
Which lends once more to wintry age
The greenness of its spring.
Oh, if these poor and blinded ones
In trustful patience wait to feel
O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
A youthful freshness steal;
Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree
Whose healing leaves of life are shed,
In answer to the breath of prayer,
Upon the waiting head;
Not to restore our failing forms,
And build the spirit's broken shrine,
But on the fainting soul to shed
A light and life divine—
Shall we grow weary in our watch,
And murmur at the long delay?
Impatient of our Father's time
And His appointed way?
Or shall the stir of outward things
Allure and claim the Christian's eye,
When on the heathen watcher's ear
Their powerless murmurs die?
Alas! a deeper test of faith
Than prison cell or martyr's stake,
The self-abasing watchfulness
Of silent prayer may make.
We gird us bravely to rebuke
Our erring brother in the wrong,—
And in the ear of Pride and Power
Our warning voice is strong.
Easier to smite with Peter's sword
Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer.
Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord,
Our hearts can do and dare.
But oh! we shrink from Jordan's side,
From waters which alone can save;
And murmur for Abana's banks
And Pharpar's brighter wave.
O Thou, who in the garden's shade
Didst wake Thy weary ones again,
Who slumbered at that fearful hour
Forgetful of Thy pain;
Bend o'er us now, as over them,
And set our sleep-bound spirits free,
Nor leave us slumbering in the watch
Our souls should keep with Thee!
1841