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RED JACKET.

A CHIEF OF THE INDIAN TRIBES, THE TUSCARORAS.

ON LOOKING AT HIS PORTRAIT BY WEIR.

COOPER, whose name is with his country's woven,
First in her files, her PIONEER of mind-
A wanderer now in other climes, has proven
His love for the young land he left behind;

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And throned her in the senate hall of nations, Robed like the deluge rainbow, heaven-wrought, Magnificent as his own mind's creations,

And beautiful as its green world of thought;

And faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted

As law authority,-it passed nem. con.— He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, The most enlightened people ever known.

That all our week is happy as a Sunday
In Paris, full of song and dance and laugh;
And that, from Orleans to the Bay of Fundy,
There's not a bailiff, or an epitaph.

And furthermore-in fifty years, or sooner,
We shall export our poetry and wine;
And our brave fleet, eight frigates and a schooner,
Will sweep the seas from Zembla to the Line.

If he were with me, King of Tuscarora !
Gazing, as I, upon thy portrait now,

In all its medalled, fringed, and beaded glory,

Its eye's dark beauty, and its thoughtful brow—

Its brow, half martial, and half diplomatic,
Its eye, upsoaring like an eagle's wings;
Well might he boast that we, the Democratic,
Outrival Europe, even in our Kings!

For thou wast monarch born. Tradition's pages
Tell not the planting of thy parent tree,
But that the forest tribes have bent for ages
To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

Thy name is princely,-if no poet's magic
Could make RED JACKET grace an English rhyme,
Though some one with a genius for the tragic
Hath introduced it in a pantomime,

Yet it is music in the language spoken
Of thine own land; and on her herald roll;
As bravely fought for, and as proud a token
As Cœur de Lion's, of a warrior's soul.

Thy garb-though Austria's bosom-star would frighten That medal pale, as diamonds the dark mine, And George the Fourth wore, at his court at Brighton, A more becoming evening dress than thine;

Yet 'tis a brave one, scorning wind and weather,
And fitted for thy couch, on field and flood,
A Rob Roy's tartan for the Highland heather,
Or forest green for England's Robin Hood.

Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whale's?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings,-the Argo's gallant sailors,
Heroes in history, and gods in song.

Is beauty?—Thine has with thy youth departed; But the love-legends of thy manhood's years, And she who perished, young and broken hearted, Are-but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears.

Is eloquence?-Her spell is thine that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery,-they are short.

The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon,

Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding The hearts of millions till they move as one;

Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded The road to death as to a festival;

And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded With banner-folds of glory the dark pall.

Who will believe? Not I-for in deceiving Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream; I cannot spare the luxury of believing

That all things beautiful are what they seem.

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