And even my father checked his tread,
And hushed his voice, beside her bed:
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye's imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,
And in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.

"Calm as a child to slumber soothed, As if an angel's hand had smoothed

The still, white features into rest, Silent and cold, without a breath

To stir the drapery on her breast, Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, The horror of the mortal pang, The suffering look her brow had worn, The fear, the strife, the anguish gone, She slept at last in death!

"O, tell me, father, can the dead Walk on the earth, and look on us, And lay upon the living's head

Their blessing or their curse? For, O, last night she stood by me, As I lay beneath the woodland tree!"

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe, "Jesu ! what was it my daughter saw?"

"She came to me last night.

The dried leaves did not feel her tread ;

She stood by me in the wan moonlight,
In the white robes of the dead!
Pale, and very mournfully

She bent her light form over me.
I heard no sound, I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days,-
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if love's smile were frozen there,
Came o'er me with an icy thrill;
O God! I feel its presence still!"

The Jesuit makes the holy sign,-
"How passed the vision, daughter
mine?"

13

And scatter, and melt into the light, So scattering, melting on my sight, The pale, cold vision passed;

But those sad eyes were fixed on mine Mournfully to the last."

"God help thee, daughter, tell me why That spirit passed before thine eye !" "Father, I know not, save it be

That deeds of mine have summoned her

From the unbreathing sepulchre, To leave her last rebuke with me. Ah, woe for me! my mother died Just at the moment when I stood Close on the verge of womanhood, A child in everything beside; And when my wild heart needed most Her gentle counsels, they were lost. "My father lived a stormy life, Of frequent change and daily strife; And, God forgive him! left his child To feel, like him, a freedom wild; To love the red man's dwelling-place, The birch boat on his shaded floods, The wild excitement of the chase Sweeping the ancient woods, The camp-fire, blazing on the shore Of the still lakes, the clear stream, where

The idle fisher sets his wear, Or angles in the shade, far more

Than that restraining awe I felt Beneath my gentle mother's care,

When nightly at her knee I knelt, With childhood's simple prayer.

"There came a change. The wild, glad mood

Of unchecked freedom passed. Amid the ancient solitude

Of unshorn grass and waving wood,

And waters glancing bright and fast, A softened voice was in my ear, Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine The hunter lifts his head to hear, Now far and faint, now full and nearThe murmur of the wind-swept pine. A manly form was ever nigh,

A bold, free hunter, with an eye Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake

Both fear and love, -to awe and charm:

"T was as the wizard rattlesnake, Whose evil glances lure to harmWhose cold and small and glittering

eye,

And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey !

Fear, doubt, thought, life itself, erelong
Merged in one feeling deep and strong.
Faded the world which I had known,

A poor vain shadow, cold and waste; In the warm present bliss alone

Seemed I of actual life to taste. Fond longings dimly understood, The glow of passion's quickening blood, And cherished fantasies which press The young lip with a dream's caress, The heart's forecast and prophecy Took form and life before my eye, Seen in the glance which met my own, Heard in the soft and pleading tone, Felt in the arms around me cast, And warm heart-pulses beating fast. Ah! scarcely yet to God above With deeper trust, with stronger love Has prayerful saint his meek heart lent, Or cloistered nun at twilight bent, Than I, before a human shrine, As mortal and as frail as mine, With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,

Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.

"Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold, at which I knelt
The idol of that shrine was gone;
A humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurned and lone,
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning
brain,

And tears that fell like fiery rain,
I passed a fearful time.

which made

An Eden of the forest shade.

And oh, with what a loathing eye, With what a deadly hate, and deep.

I saw that Indian murderer lie Before me, in his drunken sleep!

What though for me the deed was done, And words of mine had sped him on ! Yet when he murmured, as he slept,

The horrors of that deed of blood, The tide of utter madness swept

O'er brain and bosom, like a flood. And, father, with this hand of mine - " "Ha! what didst thou?" the Jesuit cries,

Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain, And shading, with one thin hand, his eyes,

With the other he makes the holy sign. "I smote him as I would a worm ;With heart as steeled, with nerves as firm:

He never woke again !"

"Woman of sin and blood and shame, Speak, -I would know that victim's

Father," she gasped,

known

a chieftain,

As Saco's Sachem, -MOGG MEgone!"

Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams,

What keen desires, what cherished schemes,

What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall!
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church's foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church's sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,
The fiery-souled Castine? 17

Three

backward steps the Jesuit takes,

His long, thin frame as ague shakes;

And loathing hate is in his eye, As from his lips these words of fear Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear, "The soul that sinneth shall surely die !"

She stands, as stands the stricken deer,
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,
Between him and his hiding-place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
"Save me, O holy man!"—
- her cry

Fills all the void, as if a tongue,
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung,
Thrilling with mortal agony;

Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's

Ан, weary Priest !-with pale hands pressed

On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.

Ever thus the spirit must,

Guilty in the sight of Heaven. With a keener woe be riven, For its weak and sinful trust In the strength of human dust; And its anguish thrill afresh, For each vain reliance given To the failing arm of flesh.

Fears which darken to despair. Hoary priest thy dream is done Of a hundred red tribes won

To the pale of Holy Church; And the heretic o'erthrown, And his name no longer known, And thy weary brethren turning, Joyful from their years of mourning, Twixt the altar and the porch. Hark! what sudden sound is heard In the wood and in the sky, Shriller than the scream of bird, Than the trumpet's clang more high! Every wolf-cave of the hills,

Forest arch and mountain gorge, Rock and dell, and river verge, With an answering echo thrills. Well does the Jesuit know that cry, Which summons the Norridgewock to die,

And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh. He listens, and hears the rangers come, With loud hurrah, and jar of drum, And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot), And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot, And taunt and menace,-answered well By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, The bark of dogs, the squaw's mad

scream,

The dash of paddles along the stream,The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves Of the maples around the church's eaves,

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

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

Let

tawhich wes

saseen?

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 brutaljeer;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

-

17

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,
Crying in the ear of God,
Gave the earth its primal stain,
He whose mercy ever liveth,
Who repenting guilt forgiveth,
And the broken heart receiveth, -
Wanderer of the wilderness,

Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild, He regardeth thy distress,

And careth for his sinful child!

'Tis spring-time on the eastern hills! Like torrents gush the summer rills;