The deep black lashes, o’er the half-shut eye—
For death was on its lids—fell mournfully.
But the cold cheek was sunk, the raven hair
Dimm’d, the slight form all wasted, as by care.
Whence came that early blight? Her kindred’s place
Was not amidst the high De Couci race;
Yet there her shrine had been! She grasp’d a wreath,
The tomb’s last garland!—This was love in death.
INDIAN WOMAN’S DEATH-SONG.
[An Indian woman, driven to despair by her husband’s desertion of her for another wife, entered a canoe with her children, and rowed it down the Mississippi towards a cataract. Her voice was heard from the shore singing a mournful death-song, until overpowered by the sound of the waters in which she perished. The tale is related in Long’s “Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River.”]