Narrative Poems, part 2, Bridal of Pennacook | Page 4

vassals making,
Flowers from icy pillows waking,

Tresses of the sunrise shaking
Over midnight skies.
Still, to th'
earnest soul, the sun
Rests on towered Gibeon,
And the moon of
Ajalon
Lights the battle-grounds of life;
To his aid the strong

reverses
Hidden powers and giant forces,
And the high stars, in
their courses,
Mingle in his strife!
III. THE DAUGHTER.
The soot-black brows of men, the yell
Of
women thronging round the bed,
The tinkling charm of ring and shell,

The Powah whispering o'er the dead!
All these the Sachem's home had known,
When, on her journey long
and wild
To the dim World of Souls, alone,
In her young beauty
passed the mother of his child.
Three bow-shots from the Sachem's dwelling
They laid her in the
walnut shade,
Where a green hillock gently swelling
Her fitting
mound of burial made.
There trailed the vine in summer hours,
The
tree-perched squirrel dropped his shell,--
On velvet moss and
pale-hued flowers,
Woven with leaf and spray, the softened sunshine
fell!
The Indian's heart is hard and cold,
It closes darkly o'er its care,

And formed in Nature's sternest mould,
Is slow to feel, and strong to
bear.
The war-paint on the Sachem's face,
Unwet with tears, shone
fierce and red,
And still, in battle or in chase,
Dry leaf and
snow-rime crisped beneath his
foremost tread.
Yet when her name was heard no more,
And when the robe her
mother gave,
And small, light moccasin she wore,
Had slowly
wasted on her grave,
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped
Their
sunset dance and moonlit play;
No other shared his lonely bed,
No
other fair young head upon his bosom lay.
A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes
The tempest-smitten tree
receives
From one small root the sap which climbs
Its topmost
spray and crowning leaves,
So from his child the Sachem drew
A
life of Love and Hope, and felt

His cold and rugged nature through


The softness and the warmth of her young
being melt.
A laugh which in the woodland rang
Bemocking April's gladdest
bird,--
A light and graceful form which sprang
To meet him when
his step was heard,--
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark,
Small
fingers stringing bead and shell
Or weaving mats of bright-hued
bark,--
With these the household-god [3] had graced
his wigwam
well.
Child of the forest! strong and free,
Slight-robed, with loosely
flowing hair,
She swam the lake or climbed the tree,
Or struck the
flying bird in air.
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon
Her
snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way;
And dazzling in the summer
noon
The blade of her light oar threw off its shower
of spray!
Unknown to her the rigid rule,
The dull restraint, the chiding frown,

The weary torture of the school,
The taming of wild nature down.

Her only lore, the legends told
Around the hunter's fire at night;

Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled,
Flowers bloomed and
snow-flakes fell, unquestioned
in her sight.
Unknown to her the subtle skill
With which the artist-eye can trace

In rock and tree and lake and hill
The outlines of divinest grace;

Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest,
Which sees, admires, yet yearns
alway;
Too closely on her mother's breast
To note her smiles of
love the child of Nature lay!
It is enough for such to be
Of common, natural things a part,
To
feel, with bird and stream and tree,
The pulses of the same great heart;

But we, from Nature long exiled,
In our cold homes of Art and
Thought
Grieve like the stranger-tended child,
Which seeks its
mother's arms, and sees but feels
them not.
The garden rose may richly bloom
In cultured soil and genial air,


To cloud the light of Fashion's room
Or droop in Beauty's midnight
hair;
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew
The sweetbrier on the hillside
shows
Its single leaf and fainter hue,
Untrained and wildly free, yet
still a sister rose!
Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo
Their mingling shades of joy and ill

The instincts of her nature threw;
The savage was a woman still.

Midst outlines dim of maiden schemes,
Heart-colored prophecies of
life,
Rose on the ground of her young dreams
The light of a new
home, the lover and the wife.
IV. THE WEDDING.
Cool and dark fell the autumn night,
But the
Bashaba's wigwam glowed with light,
For down from its roof, by
green withes hung,
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots swung.
And along the river great wood-fires
Shot into the night their long,
red spires,
Showing behind the tall, dark wood,
Flashing before on
the sweeping flood.
In the changeful wind, with shimmer and shade,
Now high, now low,
that firelight played,
On tree-leaves wet with evening dews,
On
gliding water and still canoes.
The trapper that night on Turee's brook,
And the weary fisher on
Contoocook,
Saw over the marshes, and through the pine,
And
down on the river, the dance-lights shine.
For the Saugus Sachem had
come to woo
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
And laid at her
father's feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white.
From the Crystal Hills to the far southeast
The river Sagamores came
to the feast;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook
Sat
down on the mats of Pennacook.
They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,
From the snowy sources of
Snooganock,
And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake
Their

pine-cones in Umbagog Lake.
From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass,
Wild as his home, came
Chepewass;
And the