The rattling stock of his loaded gun,"Should send thee with him to do thy weeping!" "Father!"- the eye of Bonython Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone, Hollow and deep, as it were spoken By the unmoving tongue of death, Or from some statue's lips had broken, A sound without a breath! "Father! my life I value less Than yonder fool his gaudy dress; And how it ends it matters not, By heart-break or by rifle-shot; But spare awhile the scoff and threat, Our business is not finished yet." Не His daughter's cold, damp hand Ruth startles from her father's g As if each nerve and muscle felt, Instinctively, the touch of guilt, Through all their subtle sympath He points her to the sleeping M "What shall be done with yonde Scamman is dead, and reven thine, The deed is signed and the land is And this drunken fool is of u Save as thy hopeful bridegroom sooth, 'T were Christian mercy to finish Ruth, Now, while he lies like a beast o If not for thine, at least for his sa Rather than let the poor dog awal To drain my flask, and claim as his Such a forest devil to run by his si Such a Wetuomanit 12 as thou wo make !" The sleeping Indian is striving to With his knife in his hand, and ing eyes!"Wagh!-Mogg will have the face's hair, For his knife is sharp, and his gers can help The hair to pull and the skin to pe Let him cry like a woman and like an eel, The great Captain Scamman lose his scalp! And Ruth, when she sees it, shall d with Mogg." His eyes are fixed, but his lips d And he sinks again, like a sense When, as his Church's legends Borne upward in ecstatic bliss, The rapt enthusiast soars away Unto a brighter world than this: A mortal's glimpse beyond the pa A moment's lifting of the veil ! Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, Penobscot's clustered wigwams la And gently from that Indian town The verdant hillside slopes adown To where the sparkling waters pla Upon the yellow sands below; And shooting round the winding s Of narrow capes, and isles whic Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, With birchen boat and glancing of The red men to their fishing go While from their planting grou borne The treasure of the golden corn, By laughing girls, whose dark eyes Wild through the locks which o'er flow. The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is Sits on her bear-skin in the sun, Watching the huskers, with a smi For each full ear which swells the And the old chief, who nevermore May bend the bow or pull the oar Smokes gravely in his wigwam do Or slowly shapes, with axe of ston The arrow-head from flint and bor Beneath the westward turning eye A thousand wooded islands lie, Gems of the waters! -with each Of brightness set in ocean's blue. Each bears aloft its tuft of trees Touched by the pencil of the fro And, with the motion of each bree A moment seen, a moment lo Changing and blent, confused tossed, The brighter with the darker cro Their thousand tints of beauty glo Half trembling, as he seeks to look Swells in the north vast Katahdin : And mingle with his own bright bay. Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods, Arched over by the ancient woods, Not thus, within the woods which hide And with their falling timbers block Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! Gazes the white man on the wreck Ofthe down-trodden Norridgewock,In one lone village hemmed at length, In battle shorn of half their strength, Turned, like the panther in his lair, With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, Wounded and faint, but tameless yet! Strotabi |