And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.
But there was weeping far away;
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Grew sorrowful and dim.
They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset ;—
Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead ;-
Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.
But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.
So long they looked-but never spied
His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.
100. THE HEROES OF SEVENTY-SIX.
WHAT heroes from the woodland sprung,
When, through the fresh-awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!
Hills flung the cry to hills around;
And ocean-mart replied to mart;
And streams, whose springs were yet unfound,
Pealed far away the startling sound
Into the forest's heart.
Then marched the brave from rocky steep,
From mountain river swift and cold;
The borders of the stormy deep,
The vales where gathered waters sleep,
Sent up the strong and bold.
As if the very earth again
Grew quick with God's creating breath,
And, from the sods of grove
and glen,
Rose ranks of iron-hearted men,
To battle to the death.
The wife, whose babe first smiled that day,
The fair fond bride of yester-eve,
And agéd sire and matron gray,
Saw the loved warriors haste away,
And deemed it sin to grieve.
Already had the strife begun;
Already blood on Concord's plain
Along the springing grass had run,
And blood had flowed at Lexington,
Like brook of April rain.
That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore;
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred-
The footstep of a foreign lord
Profaned the soil no more.
CHAINED in the market-place he stood,
A man of giant frame,
Amid the gathering multitude
That shrunk to hear his name,
All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground;-
And silently they gazed on him,
As on a lion bound.
Vainly, but well, that chief had fought,―
He was a captive now;
Yet pride, that fortune humbles not,
Was written on his brow.
The scars his dark broad bosom wore,
Showed warrior true and brave;
A prince among his tribe before,
He could not be a slave.
Then to his conqueror he spake
My brother is a king;
Undo this necklace from my neck,
And take this bracelet ring,
And send me where my brother reigns,
And I will fill thy hands
With store of ivory from the plains,
And gold-dust from the sands."
"Not for thy ivory nor thy gold
Will I unbind thy chain;
That bloody hand shall never hold
The battle-spear again.
A price thy nation never gave,
Shall yet be paid for thee;
For thou shalt be the Christian's slave,
In lands beyond the sea.'
Then wept the warrior chief, and bade
To shred his locks away;
And, one by one, each heavy braid
Before the victor lay.
Thick were the plaited locks, and long,
And, deftly hidden there,
Shone many a wedge of gold, among
The dark and crispéd hair.
"Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold Long kept for sorest need;
Take it-thou askest sums untold,
say that I am freed.
Take it my wife, the long, long day,
Weeps by the cocoa-tree,
And my young children leave their play, And ask in vain for me."
"I take thy gold, but I have made
Thy fetters fast and strong,
And ween that by the cocoa shade
Thy wife will wait thee long."
Strong was the agony that shook
The captive's frame to hear,
And the proud meaning of his look
Was changed to mortal fear
His heart was broken-crazed his brain:
At once his eye grew wild;
He struggled fiercely with his chain,
Whispered, and wept, and smiled;
Yet wore not long those fatal bands,
And once, at shut of day,
They drew him forth upon the sands,
The foul hyena's prey.
102. THE HURRICANE.
THE golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray—
A glare that is neither night nor day,
A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,
And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail !
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale!
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,
And fold at length in the dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space
Darker-still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart.
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the sky with a lurid glow.
What roar is that ?-'tis the rain that breaks,
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds !—ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all;
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.
103. THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.
WILD was the day; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New England's strand,
When first, the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.
They little thought how pure a light,
With years, should gather round that day,
How love should keep their memories bright,
How wide a realm their sons should sway.
Green are their bays; but greener still
Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed,
And regions, now untrod, shall thrill
With reverence, when their names are breathed.
Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the Pilgrim sires
This hallowed day like us shall keep.
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