Methinks it were a nobler sight
To see these vales in woods arrayed, Their summits in the golden light, Their trunks in grateful shade, And herds of deer, that bounding go O'er rills and prostrate trees below.
And then to mark the lord of all, The forest hero, trained to wars, Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall, And seamed with glorious scars, Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare The wolf, and grapple with the bear.
This bank, in which the dead were laid, Was sacred when its soil was ours; Hither the artless Indian maid
Brought wreaths of beads and flowers, And the gray chief and gifted seer Worshipped the God of thunders here.
But now the wheat is green
On clods that hid the warrior's breast, And scattered in the furrows lie
The weapons of his rest,
And there, in the loose sand, is thrown Of his large arm the mouldering bone.
Ah little thought the strong and brave, Who bore their lifeless chieftain forth; Or the young wife, that weeping gave
Her first-born to the earth,
That the pale race, who waste us now, Among their bones should guide the plough.
They waste us-aye-like April snow In the warm noon, we shrink away; And fast they follow, as we go Towards the setting day,—
Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the western sea.
But I behold a fearful sign,
To which the white men's eyes are blind; Their race may vanish hence, like mine, And leave no trace behind,
Save ruins o'er the region spread, And the white stones above the dead.
Before these fields were shorn and tilled, Full to the brim our rivers flowed;
The melody of waters filled
The fresh and boundless wood;
And torrents dashed, and rivulets played, And fountains spouted in the shade.
Those grateful sounds are heard no more, The springs are silent in the sun, The rivers, by the blackening shore, With lessening current run;
The realm our tribes are crushed to get May be a barren desert yet.
THE GRAVES OF THE PATRIOTS.
Here rest the great and good-here they repose After their generous toil. A sacred band,
They take their sleep together, while the year Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves, And gathers them again, as Winter frowns. Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre-green sods Are all their monument, and yet it tells A nobler history, than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids. They need No statue nor inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them, and the joy With which their children tread the hallowed ground That holds their venerated bones, the peace
That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth That clothes the land they rescued,—these, though
As feeling ever is when deepest,-these
Are monuments more lasting, than the fanes Reared to the kings and demigods of old.
Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs There is a solemn darkness, even at noon,
Suited to such as visit at the shrine
Of serious liberty. No factious voice
Called them unto the field of generous fame, But the pure consecrated love of home.
No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes In all its greatness. It has told itself To the astonished gaze of awe-struck kings, At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here, Where first our patriots sent the invader back Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all To tell us where they fought, and where they lie. Their feelings were all nature, and they need No art to make them known. They live in us, While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold, Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts, And the one universal Lord. They need No column pointing to the heaven they sought, To tell us of their home. The heart itself, Left to its own free purpose, hastens there, And there alone reposes. Let these elms Bend their protecting shadow o'er their graves, And build with their green roof the only fane, Where we may gather on the hallowed day, That rose to them in blood, and set in glory. Here let us meet, and while our motionless lips Give not a sound, and all around is mute In the deep sabbath of a heart too full
For words or tears-here let us strew the sod With the first flowers of spring, and make to them An offering of the plenty, Nature gives, And they have rendered ours-perpetually.
Thou who would'st see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st The haunts of men below thee, and above The mountain summits, thy expanding heart Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world To which thou art translated, and partake The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once, Here on white villages and tilth and herds And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent and the wind And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall Built by the hand that fashioned the old world To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north a path Conducts you up the narrow battlement. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
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