112

THE AFRICAN CHIEF.

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 platted locks, and long,

And deftly hidden there

Shone many a wedge of gold among

The dark and crisped hair.

"Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold
Long kept for sorest need;
Take it thou askest sums untold:

And 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."

THE AFRICAN CHIEF.

"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.

10*

113

SONG.

Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear, The hunter of the west must go,

In depth of woods to seek the deer.

His rifle on his shoulder placed,

His stores of death arranged with skill, His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,→→ Why lingers he beside the hill?

Far, in the dim and doubtful light,
Where woody slopes a valley leave,
He sees what none but lover might,
The dwelling of his Genevieve.

And oft he turns his truant eye,

And pauses oft, and lingers near; But when he marks the reddening sky, He bounds away to hunt the deer.

AN INDIAN STORY.

"I KNOW where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,

Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.

"I know where the young May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,

On the mossy bank, where the larch-tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,
Far over the silent brook.

"And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower,

And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower."

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks

To the hunting-ground on the hills;

'Tis a song of his maid of the woods and rocks, With her bright black eyes and long black locks, And voice like the music of rills.

116

He goes

AN INDIAN STORY.

to the chase-but evil eyes.

Are at watch in the thicker shades;

For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs,

And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize,
The flower of the forest maids.

The boughs in the morning wind are stirred
And the woods their song renew,
With the early carol of many a bird,
And the quickened tune of the streamlet heard
Where the hazels trickle with dew.

And Maquon has promised his dark-haired maid,
Ere eve shall redden the sky,

A good red deer from the forest shade,

That bounds with the herd through grove and glade,
At her cabin door shall lie.

The hollow woods, in the setting sun,
Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay;
And Maquon's sylvan labours are done,
And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won
He bears on his homeward way.

He stops near his bower-his eye perceives
Strange traces along the ground-

At once, to the earth his burden he heaves,

He breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves, And gains its door with a bound.