The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,- The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene, Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, The gray morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphur-ous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away, And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangled snow. There, tracks of blood, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Black ashes note where a proud city stood. Each tree which guards its darkness from the day PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. (1792-1822.) TRUTH, crushed to earth, shall rise again; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, BRYANT LXXXIX.-CAUSE FOR INDIAN RESENTMENT. M-PLA'CA-BLY, ad., irreconcilably. FE-RO'CIOUS, a., fierce; savage. VIN-DICTIVE, a., revengeful. In hov'er, noth'ing, none, give o the sound of short u as in love, a-bove', &c. 1. You say that you have bought the country. Bought it? Yes; - of whom? Of the poor, trembling natives, who knew that refusal would be vain; and who strove to make a merit of necessity, by seeming to yield with grace what they knew that they had not the power to retain.-Alas, the poor Indians! No wonder that they continue so impla'cably vindictive against the white people. No wonder that the rage of resentment is handed down from generation to gen eration. No wonder that they refuse to associate and mix permanently with their unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators. 2. No wonder that, in the unabating spite and frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an eternal war, as well as they are able; that they triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge; that they dance, sing, and rejoice, as the victim shrieks and faints amid the flames, when they imagine all the crimes of their op pressors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits of their injured forefathers hovering over the scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the grateful spectacle; and feasting on the precious odor as it arises from the burning blood of the white man. 3. Yet the people here affect to wonder that the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civilization; or, in other words, that they so obstinately refuse to adopt the manners of the white man. Go, Virginians, erase from the Indian nation the tradition of their wrongs. Make them forget, if you can, that once this charming country was theirs; that over these fields, and through these forests, their beloved forefathers once, in careless gayety, pursued their sports and hunted their game; that every returning day found them the sole, the peaceful and happy proprietors of this extensive and beautiful domain. Go, administer the cup of oblivion to recollections like these; and then you will cease to complain that the Indian refuses to be civilized. 4. But, until then, surely it is nothing wonderful that a nation, even yet bleeding afresh from the mem ory of ancient wrongs, perpetually agonized by new outrages, and goaded into desperation and madness at the prospect of the certain ruin which awaits their descendants, should hate the authors of their miseries, of their desolation, their destruction,- should hate their manners, hate their color, hate their language, hate their name, hate every thing that belongs to them! No; never, until time shall wear out the history of their sorrows and their sufferings, will the Indian be brought to love the white man, and to imitate his WILLIAM WIRT. (1772-1835.A manners. XC.-TOO LATE I STAYED. Too late I stayed-forgive the crime; How noiseless falls the foot of Time That only treads on flowers! What eye with clear account remarks The ebbing of his glass, When all its sands are diamond sparks, Ah! who to sober measurement Their plumage for his wings! W. R. SPENCER, XCI.- BERNARDO DEL CARPIO. GAGE, n., a challenge to combat. YEARN (yern), v. i., to long. CAI'TIFF (kā-), n., a base fellow. PALTER-ING (pawl-), ppr., shifting. FAL'CHION (fawl'chun), n., a sword. DUN'GEON, n., a close dark prison. Pronounce Sancho, Sank'ko; Castile, Kas-teel'. Do not say baird for beard. King Alfonzo, of Spain, according to the old chronicle, had offered Bernardo del Carpio immediate possession of the person of his father, the king's prisoner, in exchange for the castle of Carpio, held by Bernardo. The latter gave up the stronghold; whereupon the mocking king caused the father to be put to death, and his corpse placed on horseback, in which state it was led out to the son, the trusting Bernardo. In Mrs. Hemans's ballad, Bernardo is represented as letting the false king go free. In Lockhart's ballad, which is far the superior in spirit, Bernardo lets the king hear from him again. By a combination of parts of the two ballads (placing that by Mrs. Hemans first), with slight alterations, we get a clear story; though chroniclers leave us in the dark as to Beraardo's history after the murder of his father. THE warrior bowed his crested head, And tamed his heart of fire, I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord! "Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, A ransomed man, this day! Will meet him on his way." Then lightly rose that loyal son, And bounded on his steed, And lo! from far, as on they pressed, With one that 'mid them stately rode, "Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there, In very truth, is he, The father whom thy faithful heart His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, His father's hand he took ; What was there in its touch that all That hand was cold,-a frozen thing,- A plume waved o'er the noble brow,- Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed; They hushed their very hearts that saw They might have chained him, as before For the power was stricken from his arm, Then, starting suddenly, he rushed And seized the monarch's rein, Amid the pale and wildered looks And with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, The rearing war-horse led, And sternly set them face to face, The king before the dead! |