Spread waving woods, dark, limitless and vast,
When a new continent received at last
Our houseless sires. The red man, gaunt and grim,
On the strange scene his falcon vision cast;
And nameless terror shook his tawny limb
While, drowning ocean’s roar, went up their triumph-hymn;
And when the bold survivors of the band
Reached the decaying autumn-time of life,
And locks were white, and palsied was the hand,
Barbaric swarms, with axe and deadly knife,