Mazelli, and Other Poems | Page 7

year,?The youthful chief has lingered here;?Chief!--why is he so nobly named??How many warriors at his call,?By Arcouski's breath inflamed,?Would with him fight, and for him fall??Of all his father's warrior throng,?Remains not one whose lip could now?Rehearse with him the battle song,?Whose hand could bend the hostile bow.?And yet, no weak, complaining word,?From his stern lip is ever heard;?And his bright eye, so black and clear,?Is never moistened by a tear;?Of quiet mien, and mournful mood,?He lives, a stoic of the wood;?Gliding about from place to place,?With noiseless step, and steady pace,?Haunting each fountain, glen, and grot,?Like the lone Genius of the spot.
IV.
And this was he who, standing there,?Seemed as an image of Despair,?Which agony's convulsive strife,?Had quickened into breathing life.?The writhing lip, the brow all wet?With Pain's cold, clammy, deathlike sweat;?The hand, that with unconscious clasp,?Strained his keen dagger in its grasp;?The eye, that lightened with the blaze?Of frenzied Passion's maniac gaze;?The nervous, shuddering thrill, which came?At intervals along his frame;?The tremulously heaving breast,--?These signs the inward storm confessed:?Yet, through those signs of wo, there broke?Flashes of fearless thought, which spoke?A soul within, whose haughty will?Would wrestle with immortal ill,?And only quit the strife, when fate?Its being should annihilate.?Silent he stood, until the breeze?Bore from his lips some words like these.
V.
"The words I speak are no complaint?And if I breathe out my despair,?It is not that my heart grows faint,?Or shrinks from what 'tis doomed to bear.?Though every sorrow which may shake?Or rend man's heart, should pierce my own,?Their strength united, should not make?My lip breathe one complaining tone.?If I must suffer, it shall be?With a firm heart, a soul elate,?A wordless scorn, which silently?Shall mock the stern decrees of fate.?The weak might bend, the timid shrink,?Until misfortune's storm blew by,?But I, a chieftain's son, should drink?Its proffered cup without a sigh.?And it will scarcely, to my lip,?Seem harsher than yon fountain's flow,?For I have held companionship?With Misery, from my youth till now--?Have felt, by turns, each pang, each care,?Her hapless sons are doomed, to bear;--?I caught my mother's parting breath,?When passed she to the spirit land;?And from the fatal field of death,?Where, leading on his fearless band,?With fiery and resistless might,?He fell, though victor in the fight,?Pierced by the arrow of some foe,?I saw my father's spirit go.?And I have seen his warrior men,?From mountain, valley, hill, and glen,?Departing one by one, since then,?As from the dry and withered spray,?The wilted leaves are blown away,?Upon some windy autumn day:?I, only I, am left to be?The last leaf of the blighted tree,?Which the first wind that through the sky?Goes carelessly careering by,?Will, in its wild, unheeded mirth,?Rend from its hold, and dash to earth:?Thus, here alone have I remained,?An outcast, where I should have reigned.
VI.
"How shall I to myself alone,?The weakness of my bosom own??Why, mindful of my fame and pride,?When my brave brethren had died;?Why, with my friendly, ready knife,?Drew I not forth my useless life??Was it a coward fear of death,?That bade me treasure up my breath??Or had life yet some genial ray,?That wooed me in its warmth to stay??Had earth yet one whose smile could stir,?My spirit with deep love for her??Yes, though within me hope was dead,?And wild Ambition's dreams were fled;?Though o'er my blighted heart, Despair?Desponded, love still nestled there;?Love! how the pale-faced scorner's lip?Would sneer, to hear me name that name;?Yet was it deep within my soul?A secret but consuming flame;?Whose overruling mastership,?Defied slow Reason's dull control!?And felt for one of that vile race,?To whom my tribe had given place;?Was nursed in silence and in shame!?Shame, for the weakness of a heart,?Yet bleeding from th' oppressor's blow,?Which could bestow its better part?Upon the offspring of a foe!?They, the mean delvers of the soil,?The wielders of the felling axe,--?Because we will not stoop to toil,?Nor to its burdens bond our backs;?Because we scorn Seduction's wiles,?Her lying words and forged smiles,?They, the foul slaves of lust and gold,?Say that our blood and hearts are cold.(3)?But ere the morrow's dawning light?Has climbed yon eastern craggy height,?One, whose fierce eye and haughty brow,?Are lit with pride and pleasure now,?Shall learn, at point of my true steel,?How much the Red man's heart may feel,--?How fearlessly he strikes the foe,?When love and vengeance prompt the blow!?Though scorned by him, I know an art?Could stop the beatings of his heart,?Ere his own lips could say, 'Be still!'?A single arrow from my bow,?Bathed in the poisonous manchenille,(4)?Would in an instant lay him low;?So deadly is the icy chill,?With which the life-blood it congeals,?The wounded warrior scarcely feels?Its fatal touch ere he expire:?But, when Revenge would glut his ire,?He stops not with immediate death?The current of his victim's breath;?With gasp, and intervening pause,?The lifeblood from its source he draws,?Marks, in the crimson stream that flows,?How near life verges to its close,--?And its