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

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 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