And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown,

On wigwam-log and tree and stone.
Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streaked with human
gore,

A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel-door.
"Ha-Bomazeen!-In God's name say,
What mean these sounds of bloody fray?"
Silent, the Indian points his hand

To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
"Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen?
Where are De Rouville 18 and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga's queen?"
"Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid !
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw,-
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone."

Of evil seen and done,

13

Of scalps brought home by his savage flock

From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock In the Church's service won.

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, As scowling on the priest he looks: "Cowesass -cowesass-tawhich wessaseen ?19

Let my father look upon Bomazeen,
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw;
Let my father ask his God to make

A dance and a feast for a great saga

more,

When he paddles across the western lake, With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore.

"Cowesass -cowesass-tawhich wessa

seen?

Let my father die like Bomazeen! "

Through the chapel's narrow doors,

And through each window in the walls, Round the priest and warrior pours

The deadly shower of English balls. Low on his cross the Jesuit falls; While at his side the Norridgewock, With failing breath, essays to mock And menace yet the hated foe, Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro Exultingly before their eyes, Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow, Defiant still, he dies.

"So fare all eaters of the frog! Death to the Babylonish dog

Down with the beast of Rome !" With shouts like these, around the dead, Unconscious on his bloody bed,

The rangers crowding come. Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear The unfeeling taunt, the brutal jeer;Spurn for he sees ye not — in wrath, The symbol of your Saviour's death; Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal, And trample, as a thing accursed, The cross he cherished in the dust : The dead man cannot feel!

Brutal alike in deed and word,

With callous heart and hand of strife, How like a fiend may man be made, Plying the foul and monstrous trade

Whose harvest-field is human life, Whose sickle is the reeking sword!

Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in!
O, by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,

And flowing with its crystal river,
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
Glimpses on the soldiers' sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,

From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre-like it vanisheth!

Wretched girl! one eye alone
Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye, which slumbers never,
Watching o'er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut's root,
Peering in the she-wolf's den,
Wading through the marshy fen,
Where the sluggish water-snake
Basks beside the sunny brake,
Coiling in his slimy bed,
Smooth and cold against thy tread,
Purposeless, thy mazy way
Threading through the lingering day.
And at night securely sleeping
Where the dogwood's dews are weeping!
Still, though earth and man discard thee,
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee:
He who spared the guilty Cain,

Even when a brother's blood,

'Tis springtime on the eastern hills ! Like torrents gush the summer rills; Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves

The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
And glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks ;

The southwest wind is warmly blowing,
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,

Are with it on its errands going.

A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood,
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak

A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.

In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.

His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.

No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on :
The fire of conquest and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his, - to lay

Within the earth the bones of those Who perished in that fearful day, When Norridgewock became the prey Of all unsparing foes.

Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,

Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks

For firm defence or swift attack;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back
From lapsing into savagery;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
And prompted memory's fond essay,
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,
And counted with its solemn toll
The masses for his father's soul.

15

And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and
dank;

And the birchen boats of the Nor-
ridgewock,

Tethered to tree and stump and rock,
Rotting along the river bank!
Blessed Mary! who is she

Leaning against that maple-tree?
But the fixed eyelid moveth not;
The sun upon her face burns hot,
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,
Close at her feet the river rushes;
The blackbird's wing against her
brushes,

And sweetly through the hazel-bushes The robin's mellow music gushes; God save her! will she sleep alway?

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper: Wake, daughter, wake!" but

66

she stirs no limb:

The eye that looks on him is fixed and dim;

And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,

Until the angel's oath is said, And the final blast of the trump goes forth To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.

RUTH BONYTHON IS DEAD!

We had seen

The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud, Like a new heaven, shine upward from the lake

Of Winnepiseogee; and had felt
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles
Which stoop their summer beauty to the
lips

Of the bright waters. We had checked our steeds,

wall

moan

mer sky,

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks,

Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam

Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams

At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver

The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls.

take

Slant

And

noon,

starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves,

tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in
truth, a study,

To mark his spirit, alternating between
A decent and professional gravity
And an irreverent mirthfulness, which
often

Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined

The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant,

To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn,

Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains

Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter

A delicate flower on whom had blown too long

Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice

And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,

north hills:

A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets,

Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see

It chanced

That as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up

The valley of the Saco; and that girl

17

Washington,

Her brown locks ruffled by the wind which whirled

In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle, Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in

the streams

Which lave that giant's feet; whose laugh was heard

Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's green islands,

Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and visibly drooped

Like a flower in the frost. So, in that quiet inn

Which looks from Conway on the mountains piled

Heavily against the horizon of the north, Like summer thunder-clouds, we made our home :

And while the mist hung over dripping hills,

And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all day long

Beat their sad music upon roof and pane, We strove to cheer our gentle invalid.

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm Went angling down the Saco, and, returning,

Recounted his adventures and mishaps;
Gave us the history of his scaly clients,
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations
Of barbarous law Latin, passages
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and
fresh

As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire,

Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair

Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, Our youthful candidate forsook his sermons,

The associations of time, scene, and audience,

Their place amid the pictures which fill up

The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust That some, who sigh, while wandering in thought,

Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world, That our broad land, our sea-like

lakes and mountains Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung