We had set at night a sentry, lest an entry, while the sombre
Heavy slumber was upon us, by the Frenchman should be made;
But the faithless knave we posted, though of wakefulness he boasted,
'Stead of keeping watch was sleeping, and his solemn trust betrayed.
Than our slumber none profounder; never sounder fell on sleeper,
Never deeper sleep its shadow cast on dull and listless frames;
But it fled before the crashing of the portals, and the flashing,
And the soaring, and the roaring, and the crackling of the flames.
Fell the shining hatchets quickly 'mid the thickly crowded women,
Growing dim in crimson currents from the pulses of the brain;
Rained the balls from firelocks deadly, till the melted snow ran redly
With the glowing torrent flowing from the bodies of the slain.
I, from pleasant dreams awaking at the breaking of my casement,
With amazement saw the foemen enter quickly where I lay;
Heard my wife and children's screaming, as the hatchets woke their dreaming,
Heard their groaning and their moaning as their spirits passed away.
'Twas in vain I struggled madly as the sadly sounding pleading
Of my bleeding, dying darlings fell upon my tortured ears;
'Twas in vain I wrestled, raging, fight against their numbers waging,
Crowding round me there they bound me, while my manhood sank in tears.
At the spot to which they bore me, no one o'er me watched or warded;
There unguarded, bound and shivering, on the snow I lay alone;
Watching by the firelight ruddy, as the butchers dark and bloody,
Slew the nearest friends and dearest to my memory ever known.
And it seemed, as rose the roaring blaze, up soaring, redly streaming
O'er the gleaming snow around me through the shadows of the night,
That the figures flitting fastly were the fiends at revels ghastly,
Madly urging on the surging, seething billows of the fight.
Suddenly my gloom was lightened, hope was heightened, though the shrieking,
Malice-wreaking, ruthless wretches death were scattering to and fro;
For a knife lay there—I spied it, and a tomahawk beside it
Glittering brightly, buried lightly, keen edge upward, in the snow.
Naught knew I how came they thither, nor from whither; naught to me then
If the heathen dark, my captors, dropped those weapons there or no;
Quickly drawn o'er axe-edge lightly, cords were cut that held me tightly,
Then, with engines of my vengeance in my hands, I sought the foe.
Oh, what anger dark, consuming, fearful, glooming, looming horrid,
Lit my forehead, draped my figure, leapt with fury from my glance;
'Midst the foemen rushing frantic, to their sight I seemed gigantic,
Like the motion of the ocean, like a tempest my advance.