Narrative Poems, part 7, Bay of Seven Islands | Page 7

done.
Better you should starving die
Than that boy and squaw
should cry
Shame upon your father's son!"
When next morn the sun's first rays
Glistened on the hemlock sprays,

Straight that lodge the old chief sought,
And boiled sainp and
moose meat brought.
"Rise and eat, my son!" he said.
Lo, he found
the poor boy dead!
As with grief his grave they made,
And his bow beside him laid,

Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid,
On the lodge-top overhead,

Preening smooth its breast of red
And the brown coat that it wore,

Sat a bird, unknown before.
And as if with human tongue,
"Mourn
me not," it said, or sung;
"I, a bird, am still your son,
Happier than
if hunter fleet,

Or a brave, before your feet
Laying scalps in battle
won.
Friend of man, my song shall cheer
Lodge and corn-land;
hovering near,
To each wigwam I shall bring
Tidings of the corning
spring;
Every child my voice shall know
In the moon of melting
snow,
When the maple's red bud swells,
And the wind-flower lifts
its bells.
As their fond companion
Men shall henceforth own your

son,
And my song shall testify
That of human kin am I."
Thus the Indian legend saith
How, at first, the robin came
With a
sweeter life from death,
Bird for boy, and still the same.
If my
young friends doubt that this
Is the robin's genesis,
Not in vain is
still the myth
If a truth be found therewith
Unto gentleness belong

Gifts unknown to pride and wrong;
Happier far than hate is
praise,--
He who sings than he who slays.
BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
1660.
On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The General Court of Massachusetts
enacted Oct. 19, 1658, that "any person or persons of the cursed sect of
Quakers" should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of
death, from the jurisdiction of the common-wealth.
OVER the threshold of his pleasant home
Set in green clearings
passed the exiled Friend,
In simple trust, misdoubting not the end.

"Dear heart of mine!" he said, "the time has come
To trust the Lord
for shelter." One long gaze
The goodwife turned on each familiar
thing,--
The lowing kine, the orchard blossoming,
The open door
that showed the hearth-fire's blaze,--
And calmly answered, "Yes, He
will provide."
Silent and slow they crossed the homestead's bound,

Lingering the longest by their child's grave-mound.
"Move on, or stay
and hang!" the sheriff cried.
They left behind them more than home
or land,
And set sad faces to an alien strand.
Safer with winds and waves than human wrath,
With ravening wolves
than those whose zeal for God
Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod

Drear leagues of forest without guide or path,
Or launching frail boats
on the uncharted sea,
Round storm-vexed capes, whose teeth of
granite ground
The waves to foam, their perilous way they wound,

Enduring all things so their souls were free.
Oh, true confessors,

shaming them who did
Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fathers bore

For you the Mayflower spread her sail once more,
Freighted with
souls, to all that duty bid
Faithful as they who sought an unknown
land,
O'er wintry seas, from Holland's Hook of Sand!
So from his lost home to the darkening main,
Bodeful of storm, stout
Macy held his way,
And, when the green shore blended with the gray,

His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn back again."
"Nay, woman,
weak of faith, kneel down," said he,
And say thy prayers: the Lord
himself will steer;
And led by Him, nor man nor devils I fear!
So
the gray Southwicks, from a rainy sea,
Saw, far and faint, the loom of
land, and gave
With feeble voices thanks for friendly ground

Whereon to rest their weary feet, and found
A peaceful death-bed and
a quiet grave
Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than his age,
The lord
of Shelter scorned the bigot's rage.
Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's
lonely shores,
And Indian-haunted Narragansett saw
The way-worn
travellers round their camp-fire draw,
Or heard the plashing of their
weary oars.
And every place whereon they rested grew
Happier for
pure and gracious womanhood,
And men whose names for stainless
honor stood,
Founders of States and rulers wise and true.
The Muse
of history yet shall make amends
To those who freedom, peace, and
justice taught,
Beyond their dark age led the van of thought,
And
left unforfeited the name of Friends.
O mother State, how foiled was
thy design
The gain was theirs, the loss alone was thine.
THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN.
The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Miirchen, Berlin, 1816. The
ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised,
while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad
companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be
dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of
past ages.

THE pleasant isle of Rugen looks the Baltic water o'er,
To the
silver-sanded beaches of the Pomeranian
shore;
And in the town of Rambin a little boy and maid
Plucked the
meadow-flowers together and in the
sea-surf played.
Alike were they in beauty if not in their degree
He was the
Amptman's first-born, the miller's
child was she.
Now of old the isle of Rugen was full of Dwarfs
and Trolls,
The
brown-faced little Earth-men, the people without
souls;
And for