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;
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 sunn'd and shelter'd nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks;
The south-west wind is warmly blowing,
And odours from the springing grass,
The sweet birch, 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 batter'd 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 perish'd in that fearful day,
When Norridgewock became the prey
Of all-unsparing foes.
Sad are thy musing thoughts, CASTINE,
Of the old warrior BOMAZEEN,
So prompt to summon at thy call
Of need, the gleaming tomahawks
Of the now wasted Norridgewocks;
And him, the dearest loved of all,
Thy bosom-friend, the martyr'd RALLE!
Hark! from the foremost of the band
Suddenly bursts the Indian yell;
For now on the very spot they stand
Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell.
No wigwam smoke is curling there,
The very carth is scorch'd and bare;
And they pause, and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life, but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
And, here and there, on the blacken'd ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn at daylight's close,
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 Norridgewock,
Tether'd to tree, and stump, and rock,
Rotting along the river bank!
Blessed MARY! who is she
Leaning against that maple tree?
The sun upon her face burns hot,
But the fix'd eyelid moveth not;
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 she stirs no limb: The eye that looks on him is fix'd 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 gone forth
To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.
RUTH BONYTHON is dead!
MARY G, aged 18, a "Sister of Charity," died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the prevalence of the Indian Cholera, while in voluntary attendance on the sick.
"BRING out your dead!" the midnight street Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call; Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet;
Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet, Her coffin and her pall.
"What! only one!" the brutal hackman said, As, with an oath, he spurn'd away the dead.
How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As roll'd that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
The dying turn'd him to the wall,
To hear it and to die!
Onward it roll'd; while oft the driver stay'd,
And hoarsely clamour'd, "Ho! bring out your dead."
It paused beside the burial-place:
"Toss in your load!" and it was done. With quick hand and averted face, Hastily to the grave's embrace
They cast them, one by one-
Stranger and friend-the evil and the just,
Together trodden in the churchyard dust.
And thou, young martyr! thou wast there:
No white-robed sisters round thee trod,
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer
Rose through the damp and noisome air,
Giving thee to thy God;
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallow'd taper gave
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!
Yet, gentle sufferer, there shall be,
In every heart of kindly feeling,
A rite as holy paid to thee
As if beneath the convent-tree
Thy sisterhood were kneeling,
At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.
For thou wast one in whom the light
Of Heaven's own love was kindled well,
Enduring, with a martyr's might,
Through weary day and wakeful night,
Far more than words may tell :
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!
Where manly hearts were failing, where
The throngful street grew foul with death,
O, high-soul'd martyr! thou wast there,
Inhaling from the loathsome air
Poison with every breath;
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread
From the wrung dying and the unconscious dead.
And, where the sickly taper shed
Its light through vapours, damp, confined,
Hush'd as a seraph's fell thy tread,
A new ELECTRA by the bed
Of suffering humankind!
Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,
To that pure hope which fadeth not away.
Innocent teacher of the high
And holy mysteries of Heaven!
How turn'd to thee each glazing eye,
In mute and awful sympathy,
As thy low prayers were given;
And the o'erhovering spoiler wore, the while,
An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!
A blessed task! and worthy one
Who, turning from the world, as thou,
Ere being's pathway had begun
To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
Had sealed her early vow,
Giving to God her beauty and her youth,
Her pure affections and her guileless truth.
Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here
Could be for thee a meet reward;
Thine is a treasure far more dear:
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear
Of living mortal heard
The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,
The holy presence of Eternal Love!
Sleep on in peace. The earth has not
A nobler name than thine shall be. The deeds by martial manhood wrought, The lofty energies of thought,
These have but frail and fading honours; thine
Shall time unto eternity consign.
Yea: and when thrones shall crumble down,
And human pride and grandeur fall-
The herald's pride of long renown,
The mitre and the kingly crown-
Perishing glories all!
The pure devotion of thy generous heart
Shall live in heaven, of which it was a part!
He comes-he comes-the Frost Spirit comes:
You may trace his footsteps now
On the naked woods and the blasted fields,
And the brown hill's wither'd brow.
He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees,
Where their pleasant green came forth,
And the winds, which follow wherever he goes,
Have shaken them down to earth.
He comes-he comes-the Frost Spirit comes From the frozen Labrador:
From the icy bridge or the northern seas,
Which the white bear wanders o'er:
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice,
And the luckless forms below,
In the sunless cold of the atmosphere,
Into marble statues grow!
He comes-he comes-the Frost Spirit comes! And the quiet lake shall feel
The torpid touch of his glazing breath,
And ring to the skater's heel;
And the streams which danced on the broken rocks,
Or sang to the leaning grass,
Shall bow again to their winter chain,
And in mournful silence pass.
He comes he comes-the Frost Spirit comes!
Let us meet him as we may,
And turn with the light of the parlour-fire
His evil power away;
And gather closer the circle round,
When that firelight dances high,
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled fiend,
As his sounding wing goes by!
THE CYPRESS TREE OF CEYLON.*
THEY sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress tree about,
And from the wrinkled brows of age
Their failing eyes look'd out.
Gray age and sickness waiting there,
Through weary night and lingering day,
Grim as the idols at their side,
And motionless as they.
Unheeded, in the boughs above
The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet;
Unseen of them the island's flowers
Bloom'd brightly at their feet.
O'er them the tropic night-storm swept,
The thunder crash'd on rock and hill,
The lightning wrapp'd them like a cloud,-
Yet there they waited still!
What was the world without to them?
The Moslem's sunset call-the dance
Of Ceylon's maids-the passing gleam
Of battle-flag and lance?
They waited for that falling leaf
Of which the wandering Jogees sing,
Which lends once more to wintry age
The greenness of its spring.
O! if these poor and blinded ones
In trustful patience wait to feel
O'er torpid pulse and failing limb
A youthful freshness steal:
Shall we, who sit beneath that tree
Whose healing leaves of life are shed
In answer to the breath of prayer,
Upon the waiting head:
Not to restore our failing forms,
Nor build the spirit's broken shrine,
But on the fainting soul to shed
A light and life divine:
Shall we grow weary at our watch,
And murmur at the long delay,-
Impatient of our Father's time,
And his appointed way?
Or shall the stir of outward things
Allure and claim the Christian's eye,
When on the heathen watcher's ear
Their powerless murmurs die?
Alas! a deeper test of faith
Than prison-cell or martyr's stake,
The self-abasing watchfulness
Of silent prayer may make.
We gird us bravely to rebuke
Our erring brother in the wrong;
And in the ear of pride and power
Our warning voice is strong.
* IBN BATUTA, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cypress tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by the inhabitants, the leaves of which were said to fall only at long and uncertain periods; and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored at once to youth and vigour. The traveller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sitting silent under the tree, patiently waiting the fall of a leaf.
Easier to smite with PETER's sword,
Than "watch one hour" in humbling prayer;
Life's "great things," like the Syrian lord,
Our souls can do and dare.
But, O, we shrink from Jordan's side,
From waters which alone can save;
And murmur for Abana's banks,
And Pharpar's brighter wave.
O! Thou who in the garden's shade
Didst wake thy weary ones again,
Who slumber'd in that fearful hour,
Forgetful of thy pain:
Bend o'er us now, as over them,
And set our sleep-bound spirits free, Nor leave us slumbering in the watch Our souls should keep with thee!
THE ocean looketh up to heaven,
As 't were a living thing; The homage of its waves is given In ceaseless worshipping. They kneel upon the sloping sand, As bends the human knee, A beautiful and tireless band, The priesthood of the sea! They pour the glittering treasures out Which in the deep have birth, And chant their awful hymns about
The watching hills of earth.
The green earth sends its incense up
From every mountain-shrine,
From every flower and dewy cup
That greeteth the sunshine.
The mists are lifted from the rills,
Like the white wing of prayer;
They lean above the ancient hills,
As doing homage there.
The forest-tops are lowly cast
O'er breezy hill and glen,
As if a prayerful spirit pass'd
On nature as on men.
The clouds weep o'er the fallen world,
E'en as repentant love;
Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl'd,
They fade in light above.
The sky is as a temple's arch,
The blue and wavy air
Is glorious with the spirit-march
Of messengers at prayer.
The gentle moon, the kindling sun,
The many stars are given,
As shrines to burn earth's incense on,
The altar-fires of Heaven!
"It hath beene as it were especially rendered unto mee, and made plaine and legible to my understandynge, that a great worshipp is going on among the thyngs of God."GRALT.
AROUND Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.
The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.
The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain-tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.
Dazzling and white! save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.
Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.
The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet upon her tardy wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.
Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its sunny nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.
And odours from the springing grass,
The sweet birch, and the sassafras,
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass.
Her tokens of renewing care
Hath Nature scatter'd everywhere,
In bud and flower, and warmer air.
But in their hour of bitterness,
What reck the broken Sokokis,
Beside their slaughter'd chief, of this?
The turf's red stain is yet undried-
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died
Along Sebago's wooded side:
And silent now the hunters stand,
Group'd darkly, where a swell of land
Slopes upward from the lake's white sand.
Fire and the axe have swept it bare,
Save one lone beech, unclosing there
Its light leaves in the April air.
With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute,
They break the damp turf at its foot,
And bare its coil'd and twisted root.
They heave the stubborn trunk aside,
The firm roots from the earth divide-
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide.
And there the fallen chief is laid,
In tassell'd garb of skins array'd,
And girdled with his wampum-braid.
* POLAN, a chief of the Sokokis Indians, the original inhabitants of the country lying between Agamenticus and Casco bay, was killed in a skirmish at Windham, on the Sebago lake, in the spring of 1756. He claimed all the lands on both sides of the Presumpscot river to its mouth at Casco, as his own. He was shrewd, subtle, and brave. After the white men had retired, the surviving Indians "swayed" or bent down a young tree until its roots were turned up, placed the body of their chief beneath them, and then released the tree to spring back to its former position.
The silver cross he loved is press'd
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest
Upon his scarr'd and naked breast.*
"Tis done: the roots are backward sent,
The beechen tree stands up unbent-
The Indian's fitting monument!
When of that sleeper's broken race
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place
Which knew them once, retains no trace;
O! long may sunset's light be shed
As now upon that beech's head-
A green memorial of the dead!
There shall his fitting requiem be,
In northern winds, that, cold and free,
Howl nightly in that funeral tree.
To their wild wail the waves which break
Forever round that lonely lake
A solemn under-tone shall make!
And who shall deem the spot unblest,
Where Nature's younger children rest,
Lull'd on their sorrowing mother's breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?
As sweet o'er them her wild flowers flow,
As if with fairer hair and brow
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below.
What though the places of their rest
No priestly knee hath ever press'd-
No funeral rite nor prayer hath bless'd?
What though the bigot's ban be there,
And thoughts of wailing and despair,
And cursing in the place of prayer!t
Yet Heaven hath angels watching round
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound-
And they have made it holy ground.
There ceases man's frail judgment; all
His powerless bolts of cursing fall
Unheeded on that grassy pall.
O, peel'd, and hunted, and reviled!
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild!
Great Nature owns her simple child!
And Nature's Gon, to whom alone
The secret of the heart is known-
The hidden language traced thereon;
Who, from its many cumberings
Of form and creed, and outward things,
To light the naked spirit brings;
Not with our partial eye shall scan—
Not with our pride and scorn shall ban
The spirit of our brother man!
The Sokokis were early converts to the Catholic faith. Most of them, prior to the year 1756, had removed to the French settlements on the St. Francois.
The brutal and unchristian spirit of the early settlers of New England toward the red man is strikingly illus trated in the conduct of the man who shot down the Sokokis chief. He used to say he always noticed the anniversary of that exploit, as "the day on which he sent the devil a present."-WILLIAMSON's History of Maine.
BLEST land of Judea! thrice hallow'd of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.
With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have linger'd before;
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of GoD.
Blue sea of the hills!-in my spirit I hear
Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear;
Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown.
Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
The gleam of thy waters, O, dark Galilee!
Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and
Thy river, O, Kishon, is sweeping along; [strong,
Where the Canaanite strove with JEHOVAH in vain,
And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain.
There, down from his mountains stern ZEBULON came,
And NAPHTALI's stag, with his eyeballs of flame,
And the chariots of JABIN roll'd harmlessly on,
For the arm of the LORD was ABINOAM'S son!
There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which
rang
To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
When the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.
Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen,
With the mountains around and the valleys between;
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
The song of the angels rose sweet on the air.
And Bethany's palm trees in beauty still throw
Their shadows at noon on the ruins below;
But where are the sisters who hasten'd to greet
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet?
I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod;
I stand where they stood with the chosen of GoD-
Where His blessings was heard and his lessons
were taught,
Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought.
O, here with His flock the sad Wanderer cameThese hills HE toil'd over in grief, are the sameThe founts where He drank by the way-side still flow,
And the same airs are blowing which breath'd on his brow!
And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet, [feet;
But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her
For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,
And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.
But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode
Of humanity clothed in the brightness of GOD?
Were my spirit but tuned from the outward and dim, It could gaze, even now, on the presence of HIM! Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when, In love and in meekness, He moved among men; And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea,
In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!
And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood,
Nor my eyes see the cross which he bow'd him to
bear,
Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.
Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
And the voice of thy love is the same even now,
As at Bethany's tomb, or on Olivet's brow.
O, the outward hath gone!-but, in glory and power,
The Spirit surviveth the things of an hour;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
On the heart's secret altar is burning the same!
How sweetly on the wood-girt town
The mellow light of sunset shone!
Each small, bright lake, whose waters still
Mirror the forest and the hill,
Reflected from its waveless breast
The beauty of a cloudless west,
Glorious as if a glimpse were given
Within the western gates of Heaven,
Left, by the spirit of the star
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar!
Beside the river's tranquil flood
The dark and low-wall'd dwellings stood,
Where many a rood of open land
Stretch'd up and down on either hand,
With corn-leaves waving freshly green
The thick and blacken'd stumps between;
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread,
The wild, untravell'd forest spread,
Back to those mountains, white and cold,
Of which the Indian trapper told,
Upon whose summits never yet
Was mortal foot in safety set.
Quiet and calm, without a fear
Of danger darkly lurking near,
The weary labourer left his plough-
The milk-maid caroll'd by her cow-
*The village of Haverhill, on the Merrimack, called by the Indians Pentucket, was for nearly seventy years a frontier town, and during thirty years endured all the horrors of savage warfare. In the year 1708, a combined body of French and Indians, under the command of DE CHALLIONS, and HERTEL DE ROUVILLE, the infamous and bloody sacker of Deerfield, made an attack upon the village, which, at that time, contained only thirty houses. Sixteen of the villagers were massacred, and a still larger number made prisoners. About thirty of the enemy also fell, and among them HERTEL DE ROUVILLE. The minister of the place, BENJAMIN ROLFE, was killed by a shot through his own door.
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