Prophet. False girl! your heart is with our foes;
Your hand I mean to turn to better use.
Iena. Oh, could it turn you from your mad intent
How freely would I give it! Drop this scheme,
Dismiss your frenzied warriors to their beds;
And, if contented with my hand, Tarhay
Can have it here.
Tarhay.I love you, Iena!
Iena. Then must you love what I do! Love our race!
'Tis this love nerves Tecumseh to unite
Its scatter'd tribes—his fruit of noble toil,
Which you would snatch unripen'd from his hand,
And feed to sour ambition. Touch it not—
Oh, touch it not, Tarhay! and though my heart
Breaks for it, I am yours.
Prophet.His anyway,
Or I am not the Prophet!
Tarhay.For my part
I have no leaning to this rash attempt,
Since Iena consents to be my wife.
Prophet. Shall I be thwarted by a yearning fool![Aside.
This soft, sleek girl, to outward seeming good,
I know to be a very fiend beneath—
Whose sly affections centre on herself,
And feed the gliding snake within her heart.
Tarhay. I cannot think her so—
Mamatee.She is not so!
There is the snake that creeps among our race;
Whose venom'd fangs would bile into our lives,
And poison all our hopes.
Prophet.She is the head—
The very neck of danger to me here,
Which I must break at once! [Aside.] Tarhay—attend!
I can see dreadful visions in the air;
I can dream awful dreams of life and fate;
I can bring darkness on the heavy earth;
I can fetch shadows from our fathers' graves,
And spectres from the sepulchres of hell.
Who dares dispute with me, disputes with death!
Dost hear, Tarhay?
[Tarhay and braves cower before the Prophet.
Tarhay.I hear, and will obey.
Spare me! Spare me!
Prophet.As for this foolish girl,
The hand she offers you on one condition,
I give to you upon a better one;
And, since she has no mind to give her heart—
Which, rest assured, is in her body still—
There,—take it at my hands!
[Flings Iena violently towards Tarhay, into whose arms she
falls fainting, and is then borne away by Mamatee.
[To Tarhay.] Go bring the braves to view the Mystic Torch
And belt of Sacred Beans grown from my flesh—
One touch of it makes them invulnerable—
Then creep, like stealthy panthers, on the foe!