Lights the battle-grounds of life;
To his aid the strong reverses
Hidden powers and giant forces,
And the high stars in their courses
Mingle in his strife!
III. THE DAUGHTER.
THE Soot-black brows of men--the yell
Of women thronging round the bed-
The tinkling charm of ring and shell-
The Powah whispering o'er the dead!-
All these the Sachem's home had known,
When, on her journey long and wild
To the dim World of Souls, alone,
In her young beauty passed the mother of his child.
Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling
They laid her in the walnut shade,
Where a green hillock gently swelling
Her fitting mound of burial made.
There trailed the vine in Summer hours-
The tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell— On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers,
Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine fell!
The Indian's heart is hard and cold-
It closes darkly o'er its care,
And formed in Nature's sternest mould,
Is slow to feel, and strong to bear.
The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
Unwet with tears, shone fierce and red,
And, still in battle or in chase,
Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath his foremost tread.
Yet, when her name was heard no more,
And when the robe her mother gave,
And small, light moccasin she wore,
Had slowly wasted on her grave,
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
Their sunset dance and moonlit play;
No other shared his lonely bed,
No other fair young head upon his bosom lay.
A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes
The tempest-smitten tree receives
From one small root the sap which climbs
Its topmost spray and crowning leaves,
So from his child the Sachem drew
A life of Love and Hope, and felt
His cold and rugged nature through
The softness and the warmth of her young being
A laugh which in the woodland rang
Bemocking April's gladdest bird-
A light and graceful form which sprang
To meet him when his step was heard-
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
Small fingers stringing bead and shell
Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark,—
With these the household-god3 had graced his wig-
Child of the forest!-strong and free,
Slight-robed, with loosely flowing hair,
She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
Or struck the flying bird in air.
O'er the heaped drifts of Winter's moon
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
And dazzling in the Summer noon
The blade of her light oar threw off its shower of spray!
Unknown to her the rigid rule,
The dull restraint, the chiding frown,
The weary torture of the school,
The taming of wild nature down.
Her only lore, the legends told
Around the hunter's fire at night;
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned in her sight.
Unknown to her the subtle skill
With which the artist-eye can trace In rock and tree and lake and hill The outlines of divinest grace; Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest
Which sees, admires, yet yearns alway; Too closely on her mother's breast
To note her smiles of love the child of Nature lay!
It is enough for such to be
Of common, natural things a part, To feel with bird and stream and tree The pulses of the same great heart; But we, from Nature long exiled
In our cold homes of Art and Thought, Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees but feels them not.
The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air,
To cloud the light of Fashion's room
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair,
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
The sweet-briar on the hill-side shows Its single leaf and fainter hue,
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!
Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
Their mingling shades of joy and ill
The instincts of her nature threw,-
The savage was a woman still.
Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
Heart-colored prophecies of life,
Rose on the ground of her young dream
The light of a new home-the lover and the wife
COOL and dark fell the Autumn night,
But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,
For down from its roof by green withes hung
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.
And along the river great wood fires
Shot into the night their long red spires,
Showing behind the tall, dark wood
Flashing before on the sweeping flood.
In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
Now high, now low, that fire-light played,
On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
On gliding water and still canoes.
The trapper, that night on Turee's brook
And the weary fisher on Contoocook
Saw over the marshes and through the pine,
And down on the river the dance-lights shine
For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
And laid at her father's feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white.
From the Crystal Hills to the far Southeast
The river Sagamores came to the feast;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook,
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook.
They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
From the snowy sources of Snooganock,
And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake
Their pine-cones in Umbagog lake.
From Ammonoosuck's mountain pass
Wild as his home came Chepewass;
And the Keenomps of the hills which throw
Their shade on the Smile of Manito.
With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
Glowing with paint came old and young,
In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.
Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and waters yield
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled
Garnished and graced that banquet wild.
Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon spear'd in the Contoocook;
Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic,
And small wild hens in reed-snares caught
From the banks of Sondagardee brought;
Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:
[stands
And, drawn from that great stone vase which
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands, 4
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
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