Narrative Poems, part 2, Bridal of Pennacook | Page 5

Keenomps of the bills which throw
Their
shade on the Smile of Manito.
With pipes of peace and bows unstrung,
Glowing with paint came old
and young,
In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed,
To the dance
and feast the Bashaba made.
Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and the
waters yield,
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,
Garnished and
graced that banquet wild.
Steaks of the brown bear fat and large
From the rocky slopes of the
Kearsarge;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon
speared in the Contoocook;
Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick
in the gravelly bed of the
Otternic;
And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught
from the banks
of Sondagardee brought;
Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,
Nuts from the trees of the
Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
And
grapes from the vines of Piscataquog:
And, drawn from that great stone vase which stands
In the river
scooped by a spirit's hands,[4]
Garnished with spoons of shell and
horn,
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn.
Thus bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and
the waters yield,
Furnished in that olden day
The bridal feast of the
Bashaba.
And merrily when that feast was done
On the fire-lit green the dance
begun,
With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum
Of old men

beating the Indian drum.
Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing,
And red arms tossing
and black eyes glowing,
Now in the light and now in the shade

Around the fires the dancers played.
The step was quicker, the song more shrill,
And the beat of the small
drums louder still
Whenever within the circle drew
The Saugus
Sachem and Weetamoo.
The moons of forty winters had shed
Their snow upon that chieftain's
head,
And toil and care and battle's chance
Had seamed his hard,
dark countenance.
A fawn beside the bison grim,--
Why turns the bride's fond eye on
him,
In whose cold look is naught beside
The triumph of a sullen
pride?
Ask why the graceful grape entwines
The rough oak with her arm of
vines;
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek
The soft lips of the
mosses seek.
Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems
To harmonize her wide
extremes,
Linking the stronger with the weak,
The haughty with the
soft and meek!
V. THE NEW HOME.
A wild and broken landscape, spiked with
firs,
Roughening the bleak horizon's northern edge;
Steep,
cavernous hillsides, where black hemlock
spurs
And sharp, gray
splinters of the wind-swept
ledge
Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or
bristling rose,
Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down upon
the
snows.
And eastward cold, wide marshes stretched away,
Dull, dreary flats
without a bush or tree,
O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a day

Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck sea;
And faint with distance

came the stifled roar,
The melancholy lapse of waves on that low
shore.
No cheerful village with its mingling smokes,
No laugh of children
wrestling in the snow,
No camp-fire blazing through the hillside oaks,

No fishers kneeling on the ice below;
Yet midst all desolate things
of sound and view,
Through the long winter moons smiled dark-eyed

Weetamoo.
Her heart had found a home; and freshly all
Its beautiful affections
overgrew
Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite wall
Soft
vine-leaves open to the moistening dew
And warm bright sun, the
love of that young wife
Found on a hard cold breast the dew and
warmth
of life.
The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy shore,
The long, dead level of
the marsh between,
A coloring of unreal beauty wore
Through the
soft golden mist of young love seen.
For o'er those hills and from that
dreary plain,
Nightly she welcomed home her hunter chief again.
No warmth of heart, no passionate burst of feeling,
Repaid her
welcoming smile and parting kiss,
No fond and playful dalliance half
concealing,
Under the guise of mirth, its tenderness;
But, in their stead, the warrior's settled pride,
And vanity's pleased
smile with homage satisfied.
Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone
Sat on his mat and slumbered
at his side;
That he whose fame to her young ear had flown
Now
looked upon her proudly as his bride;
That he whose name the
Mohawk trembling heard
Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look or
word.
For she had learned the maxims of her race,
Which teach the woman
to become a slave,
And feel herself the pardonless disgrace
Of

love's fond weakness in the wise and brave,--
The scandal and the
shame which they incur,
Who give to woman all which man requires
of her.
So passed the winter moons. The sun at last
Broke link by link the
frost chain of the rills,
And the warm breathings of the southwest
passed
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills;
The gray and
desolate marsh grew green once more,
And the birch-tree's tremulous
shade fell round the
Sachem's door.
Then from far Pennacook swift runners came,
With gift and greeting
for the Saugus chief;
Beseeching him in the great Sachem's name,

That, with the coming of the flower and leaf,
The song of birds, the
warm breeze and the rain,
Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely
sire again.
And Winnepurkit called his chiefs together,
And a grave council