Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 9

the free, wild life of the woods; and in
some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to
their old homes and civilization.
RAZE these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge
mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,

Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the
bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its
torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down
its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged
Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest,
dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled
shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By
English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered

block-house bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply shall
before thine eyes
The dusty veil of centuries rise,
The old, strange
scenery overlay
The tamer pictures of to-day,
While, like the actors
in a play,
Pass in their ancient guise along
The figures of my border
song
What time beside Cocheco's flood
The white man and the red
man stood,
With words of peace and brotherhood;
When passed the
sacred calumet
From lip to lip with fire-draught wet,
And, puffed in
scorn, the peace-pipe's smoke
Through the gray beard of Waldron
broke,
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea
For mercy, struck the
haughty key
Of one who held, in any fate,
His native pride
inviolate!
"Let your ears be opened wide!
He who speaks has never lied.

Waldron of Piscataqua,
Hear what Squando has to say!
"Squando shuts his eyes and sees,
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees.
In
his wigwam, still as stone,
Sits a woman all alone,
"Wampum beads and birchen strands
Dropping from her careless
hands,
Listening ever for the fleet
Patter of a dead child's feet!
"When the moon a year ago
Told the flowers the time to blow,
In
that lonely wigwam smiled
Menewee, our little child.
"Ere that moon grew thin and old,
He was lying still and cold;
Sent
before us, weak and small,
When the Master did not call!
"On his little grave I lay;
Three times went and came the day,

Thrice above me blazed the noon,
Thrice upon me wept the moon.
"In the third night-watch I heard,
Far and low, a spirit-bird;
Very
mournful, very wild,

Sang the totem of my child.
"'Menewee, poor Menewee,
Walks a path he cannot see
Let the
white man's wigwam light
With its blaze his steps aright.

"'All-uncalled, he dares not show
Empty hands to Manito
Better
gifts he cannot bear
Than the scalps his slayers wear.'
"All the while the totem sang,
Lightning blazed and thunder rang;

And a black cloud, reaching high,
Pulled the white moon from the
sky.
"I, the medicine-man, whose ear
All that spirits bear can hear,--
I,
whose eyes are wide to see
All the things that are to be,--
"Well I knew the dreadful signs
In the whispers of the pines,
In the
river roaring loud,
In the mutter of the cloud.
"At the breaking of the day,
From the grave I passed away;
Flowers
bloomed round me, birds sang glad,
But my heart was hot and mad.
"There is rust on Squando's knife,
From the warm, red springs of life;

On the funeral hemlock-trees
Many a scalp the totem sees.
"Blood for blood! But evermore
Squando's heart is sad and sore;

And his poor squaw waits at home
For the feet that never come!
"Waldron of Cocheco, hear!
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear;

Take the captives he has ta'en;
Let the land have peace again!"
As the words died on his tongue,
Wide apart his warriors swung;

Parted, at the sign he gave,
Right and left, like Egypt's wave.
And, like Israel passing free
Through the prophet-charmed sea,

Captive mother, wife, and child
Through the dusky terror filed.
One alone, a little maid,
Middleway her steps delayed,
Glancing,
with quick, troubled sight,
Round about from red to white.
Then his hand the Indian laid
On the little maiden's head,
Lightly

from her forehead fair
Smoothing back her yellow hair.
"Gift or favor ask I none;
What I have is all my own
Never yet the
birds have sung,
Squando hath a beggar's tongue.'
"Yet for her who waits at home,
For the dead who cannot come,
Let
the little Gold-hair be
In the place of Menewee!
"Mishanock, my little star!
Come to Saco's pines afar;
Where the
sad one waits at home,
Wequashim, my moonlight, come!"
"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a child
Christian-born to heathens
wild?
As God lives, from Satan's hand
I will pluck her as a brand!"
"Hear me, white man!" Squando cried;
"Let the little one decide.

Wequashim, my moonlight, say,
Wilt thou go with me, or stay?"
Slowly, sadly, half afraid,
Half regretfully, the maid
Owned the ties
of blood and race,--
Turned from Squando's pleading face.
Not a word the Indian spoke,
But his wampum chain he broke,
And
the beaded wonder hung
On that neck so fair and young.
Silence-shod, as phantoms seem
In the marches of a dream,

Single-filed, the grim array
Through the pine-trees wound away.
Doubting, trembling, sore amazed,
Through her tears the young child
gazed.
"God preserve her!" Waldron said;
"Satan hath bewitched
the maid!"
Years went and came. At close of day
Singing came a child from play,

Tossing from her loose-locked head
Gold in sunshine, brown in
shade.
Pride was in the mother's look,
But her head she gravely shook,

And