An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830 | Page 3

gaze?Upon his happy cabin's blaze,?And listen to his children's dying groans:
He saw--and maddening at the sight,?Gave his bold bosom to the fight;?To tiger rage his soul was driven,?Mercy was not--nor sought nor given;?The pale man from his lands must fly;?He would be free--or he would die.
XVI.
And was this savage? say,?Ye ancient few,?Who struggled through?Young freedom's trial-day--?What first your sleeping wrath awoke??On your own shores war's larum broke:?What turned to gall even kindred blood??Round your own homes the oppressor stood:?This every warm affection chilled,?This every heart with vengeance thrilled,?And strengthened every hand;?From mound to mound,?The word went round--?"Death for our native land!"
XVII.
Ye mothers, too, breathe ye no sigh,?For them who thus could dare to die??Are all your own dark hours forgot,?Of soul-sick suffering here??Your pangs, as from yon mountain spot,?Death spoke in every booming shot,?That knelled upon your ear??How oft that gloomy, glorious tale ye tell,?As round your knees your children's children hang,?Of them, the gallant Ones, ye loved so well,?Who to the conflict for their country sprang.
In pride, in all the pride of wo,?Ye tell of them, the brave laid low,?Who for their birthplace bled;?In pride, the pride of triumph then,?Ye tell of them, the matchless men,?From whom the invaders fled!
XVIII.
And ye, this holy place who throng,?The annual theme to hear,?And bid the exulting song?Sound their great names from year to year;?Ye, who invoke the chisel's breathing grace,?In marble majesty their forms to trace;
Ye, who the sleeping rocks would raise,?To guard their dust and speak their praise;?Ye, who, should some other band?With hostile foot defile the land,?Feel that ye like them would wake,?Like them the yoke of bondage break,?Nor leave a battle-blade undrawn,?Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn--
Say, have not ye one line for those,?One brother-line to spare,?Who rose but as your Fathers rose,?And dared as ye would dare?
XIX.
Alas! for them--their day is o'er,?Their fires are out from hill and shore;?No more for them the wild deer bounds,?The plough is on their hunting grounds;?The pale man's axe rings through their woods,?The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods,?Their pleasant springs are dry;?Their children--look, by power oppressed,?Beyond the mountains of the west,?Their children go--to die.
XX.
O doubly lost! oblivion's shadows close
Around their triumphs and their woes.?On other realms, whose suns have set,?Reflected radiance lingers yet;?There sage and bard have shed a light?That never shall go down in night;?There time-crowned columns stand on high,?To tell of them who cannot die;?Even we, who then were nothing, kneel?In homage there, and join earth's general peal.?But the doomed Indian leaves behind no trace,?To save his own, or serve another race;?With his frail breath his power has passed away,?His deeds, his thoughts are buried with his clay;
Nor lofty pile, nor glowing page?Shall link him to a future age,?Or give him with the past a rank:?His heraldry is but a broken bow,?His history but a tale of wrong and wo,
His very name must be a blank.
XXI.
Cold, with the beast he slew, he sleeps;?O'er him no filial spirit weeps;?No crowds throng round, no anthem-notes ascend,?To bless his coming and embalm his end;?Even that he lived, is for his conqueror's tongue,?By foes alone his death-song must be sung;
No chronicles but theirs shall tell?His mournful doom to future times;?May these upon his virtues dwell,?And in his fate forget his crimes.
XXII.
Peace to the mingling dead!?Beneath the turf we tread,?Chief, Pilgrim, Patriot sleep--?All gone! how changed! and yet the same,?As when faith's herald bark first came?In sorrow o'er the deep.?Still from his noonday height,?The sun looks down in light;?Along the trackless realms of space,?The stars still run their midnight race;?The same green valleys smile, the same rough shore?Still echoes to the same wild ocean's roar:--
But where the bristling night-wolf sprang?Upon his startled prey,?Where the fierce Indian's war-cry rang,?Through many a bloody fray;?And where the stern old Pilgrim prayed?In solitude and gloom,?Where the bold Patriot drew his blade,?And dared a patriot's doom--?Behold! in liberty's unclouded blaze,?We lift our heads, a race of other days.
XXIII.
All gone! the wild beast's lair is trodden out;
Proud temples stand in beauty there;?Our children raise their merry shout,?Where once the death-whoop vexed the air:?The Pilgrim--seek yon ancient place of graves,
Beneath that chapel's holy shade;?Ask, where the breeze the long grass waves,?Who, who within that spot are laid:?The Patriot--go, to fame's proud mount repair,
The tardy pile, slow rising there,?With tongueless eloquence shall tell?Of them who for their country fell.
XXIV.
All gone! 'tis ours, the goodly land--?Look round--the heritage behold;?Go forth--upon the mountains stand,?Then, if ye can, be cold.?See living vales by living waters blessed,
Their wealth see earth's dark caverns yield,?See ocean roll, in glory dressed,?For all a treasure, and round all a shield:
Hark to the shouts of praise?Rejoicing millions raise;?Gaze on the spires that rise,?To point them to the skies,?Unfearing and unfeared;?Then, if ye can, O then forget?To whom ye owe the sacred debt--?The Pilgrim race revered!?The men who set faith's