CXXI-THE DEFIANCE.

WHITE man, there is eternal war between me and thee! I quit not the land of my fathers but with my life. In those woods where I bent my youthful bow, I will still hunt the deer. Over yonder waters I will still glide, unrestrained, in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls I will still lay up my winter's store of food. On these fertile meadows I will still plant my corn. Stranger, the land is mine. I understand not these paper rights. I gave not my consent when, as thou sayest, these broad regions were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They could sell what was theirs. They could sell no more. How could my fathers sell that, which the Great Spirit sent me into the world to live upon? They knew not what they did.

The stranger came, a timid suppliant, few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children. Now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the whole, and says, It is mine. Stranger, there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup. The white man's dog barks at the red man's heels.

Shall I fly No, stranger.

If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the South, and dwell among the graves of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the West? The fierce Mohawk, the man-eater, is my foe. to the East? The great water is before me. Here I have lived, and here will I die! and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between me and thee. Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction. For that alone I thank thee. And now take heed to thy steps. The red man is thy foe.

When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle by thee. When thou liest down at night, my knife is at

thy throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood. Thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes. Thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife. Thou shalt build, and I will burn, till the white man or the Indian shall cease from the land. Remember, stranger, there is eternal war between me and thee!

CXXII. THE SEMINOLE.

BLAZE, with your serried columns! I will not bend the knee;
The shackle ne'er again shall bind the arm which now is free!
I've mailed it with the thunder, when the tempest muttered low;
And where it falls, ye well may dread the lightning of its blow.
I've scared you in the city; I've scalped you on the plain;
Go, count your chosen, where they fell beneath my leaden rain!
I scorn your proffered treaty; the pale-face I defy;

Revenge is stamped upon my spear, and "blood" my battle-cry!

Some strike for hope of booty; some to defend their all;
I battle for the joy I have to see the white man fall.

I love, among the wounded, to hear his dying moan,

And catch, while chanting at his side, the music of his groan. Ye've trailed me through the forest; ye've tracked me o'er the stream;

And, struggling through the everglade, your bristling bayonets

gleam.

But I stand as should the warrior, with his rifle and his spear; The scalp of vengeance still is red, and warns you, "Come not

here!"

Think ye to find my homestead? I gave it to the fire.
My tawny household do ye seek? I am a childless sire.
But, should ye crave life's nourishment, enough I have, and good;
I live on hate; 't is all my bread; yet light is not my food.
I loathe you with my bosom! I scorn you with mine eye!
And I'll taunt you with my latest breath, and fight you till I die!
I ne'er will ask for quarter, and I ne'er will be your slave;
But I'll swim the sea of slaughter till I sink beneath the wave!

CXXIII.-GERTRUDE OF WYOMING.

THIS is an extract from "Gertrude of Wyoming," a poem which has immortalized the name of Campbell. Gertrude, her father Albert, and her husband Henry Waldegrave, were forced, by the approach of hostile Indians, to leave their home in the valley, and take refuge in a neighboring fort. While they are viewing from the battlement their recent home and its surrounding scenery, Albert receives a mortal shot from an Indian in ambush, and Gertrude, while clasping him, receives another.

BUT short that contemplation! sad and short

The pause, to bid each much-loved scene adieu!
Beneath the very shadow of the fort,

Where friendly swords were drawn, and banners flew,
Ah! who could deem that foot of Indian crew
Was near? Yet there, with lust of murderous deeds,
Gleamed like a basilisk, from woods in view,
The ambushed foeman's eye; his volley speeds,
And Albert, Albert, falls! the dear old father bleeds.
And, tranced in giddy horror, Gertrude swooned;
Yet, while she clasps him lifeless to her zone,
Say, burst they, borrowed from her father's wound,
These drops? O God! the life-blood is her own;
And faltering, on her Waldegrave's bosom thrown,
"Weep not, O Love!" she cries, "to see me bleed!
Thee, Gertrude's sad survivor, thee alone!

Heaven's peace commiserate; for scarce I heed
These wounds; yet thee to leave is death, is death indeed.
"Clasp me a little longer, on the brink

Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress;
And, when this heart hath ceased to beat, O! think,
And let it mitigate thy woe's excess,

That thou hast been to me all tenderness,

A friend, to more than human friendship just.
O! by that retrospect of happiness,

And by the hopes of an immortal trust,

God shall assuage thy pangs, when I am laid in dust!

"Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart;

The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move,
Where my dear father took thee to his heart,
And Gertrude thought it ecstasy to rove
With thee, as with an angel, through the grove

Of peace; imagining her lot was cast

In heaven; for ours was not like earthly love:
And must this parting be our very last?

No! I shall love thee still, when death itself is past."

Hushed were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland
And beautiful expression seemed to melt

With love, that could not die! and still his hand
She presses to the heart, no more that felt.

Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt,
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair.

Mute, gazing, agonizing as he knelt,

Of them that stood encircling his despair,

He heard some friendly words; but knew not what they were.

FROM CAMPBELL.

CXXIV.-OUTALISSI.

In this extract from Gertrude of Wyoming, Outalissi, a friendly Indian chief, expresses his sympathy for Waldegrave, and his own determination to seek vengeance.

AREOUSKI; an imaginary Indian Deity.

"AND I could weep;" th' Oneida chief

His descant wildly thus begun;

"But that I may not stain with grief

The death-song of my father's son,
Or bow his head in woe;

For, by my wrongs, and by my wrath!

To-morrow Areouski's breath

(That fires yon heaven with storms of death,)

Shall light us to the foe:

And we shall share, my Christian boy!

The foeman's blood, the avenger's joy.

"But thee, my flower, whose breath was given

By milder genii o'er the deep,

The Spirit of the white man's heaven

Forbids not thee to weep:

Nor will the Christian host,

Nor will thy father's spirit grieve
To see thee, on the battle's eve,
Lamenting, take a mournful leave
Of her who loved thee most.

She was the rainbow to thy sight!
Thy sun thy heaven of lost delight!
"To-morrow, let us do or die!

But when the bolt of death is hurled,
Ah! whither then with thee to fly,
Shall Outalissi roam the world?
Seek we thy once-loved home?

The hand is gone that cropt its flowers:
Unheard their clock repeats its hours!
Cold is the earth within their bowers,
And, should we thither roam,
Its echoes and its empty tread

Would sound like voices from the dead!

"Or shall we cross yon mountains blue, Whose streams my kindred nation quaffed; And, by my side, in battle true,

A thousand warriors drew the shaft?

Ah! there, in desolation cold,

The desert serpent dwells alone,

Where grass o'ergrows each moldering bone And stones themselves to ruin grown,

Like me, are death-like old;

Then seek we not their camp; for there
The silence dwells of my despair!

"But hark the trump! To-morrow, thou
In glory's fires shalt dry thy tears;
E'en from the land of shadows now
My father's awful ghost appears,
Amid the clouds that round us roll;
He bids my soul for battle thirst:
He bids me dry the last-the first—
The only tears that ever burst
From Outalissi's soul;

Because I may not stain with grief
The death-song of an Indian chief."
FROM CAMPBELL.