Tecumseh: A Drama | Page 4

common to
our race!
How can one nation sell the rights of all
Without consent
of all? No! For my part I am a Red Man,
not a Shawanoe,
And here
I mean to stay. Go to your chief,
And tell him I shall meet him at
Vincennes.
[Exeunt all but TECUMSEH.]
What is there in my nature so supine
That I must ever quarrel with
revenge?
From vales and rivers which were once our own
The pale
hounds who uproot our ancient graves
Come whining for our lands,
with fawning tongues,
And schemes and subterfuge and subtleties.

O for a Pontiac to drive them back
And whoop them to their
shuddering villages!
O for an age of valour like to his,
When
freedom clothed herself with solitude,
And one in heart the scattered

nations stood,
And one in hand. It comes! and mine shall be
The
lofty task to teach them to be free--
To knit the nations, bind them
into one,
And end the task great Pontiac begun!
SCENE II.--ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST.
Enter_ LEFROY, carrying his rifle, and
examining a knot of wild
flowers._
LEFROY. This region is as lavish of its flowers
As Heaven of its
primrose blooms by night.
This is the Arum which within its root

Folds life and death; and this the Prince's Pine,
Fadeless as love and
truth--the fairest form
That ever sun-shower washed with sudden rain.

This golden cradle is the Moccasin Flower,
Wherein the Indian
hunter sees his hound;
And this dark chalice is the Pitcher-Plant

Stored with the water of forgetfulness.
Whoever drinks of it, whose
heart is pure,
Will sleep for aye 'neath foodful asphodel,
And dream
of endless love. I need it not!
I am awake, and yet I dream of love.

It is the hour of meeting, when the sun
Takes level glances at these
mighty woods,
And Iena has never failed till now,
To meet me here!
What keeps her? Can it be
The Prophet? Ah, that villain has a thought,

Undreamt of by his simple followers,
Dark in his soul as midnight!
If--but no--
He fears her though he hates! What shall I do?
Rehearse
to listening woods, or ask these oaks
What thoughts they have, what
knowledge of the past?
They dwarf me with their greatness, but shall
come
A meaner and a mightier than they,
And cut them down. Yet
rather would I dwell
With them, with wildness and its stealthy
forms--
Yea, rather with wild men, wild beasts and birds,
Than in
the sordid town that here may rise.
For here I am a part of Nature's
self,
And not divorced from her like men who plod
The weary
streets of care in search of gain.

And here I feel the friendship of the
earth:
Not the soft cloying tenderness of hand
Which fain would
satiate the hungry soul
With household honey-combs and parloured
sweets,
But the strong friendship of primeval things--
The rugged

kindness of a giant heart,
And love that lasts. I have a poem made

Which doth concern earth's injured majesty--
Be audience, ye still
untroubled stems!
(Recites)
There was a time on this fair continent
When all things throve in
spacious peacefulness.
The prosperous forests unmolested stood,

For where the stalwart oak grew there it lived
Long ages, and then
died among its kind.
The hoary pines--those ancients of the earth--

Brimful of legends of the early world,
Stood thick on their own
mountains unsubdued.
And all things else illumined by the sun,

Inland or by the lifted wave, had rest.
The passionate or calm
pageants of the skies
No artist drew; but in the auburn west

Innumerable faces of fair cloud
Vanished in silent darkness with the
day.
The prairie realm--vast ocean's paraphrase--
Rich in wild
grasses numberless, and flowers
Unnamed save in mute Nature's
inventory
No civilized barbarian trenched for gain.
And all that
flowed was sweet and uncorrupt.
The rivers and their tributary
streams,
Undammed, wound on forever, and gave up
Their lonely
torrents to weird gulfs of sea,
And ocean wastes unshadowed by a sail.

And all the wild life of this western world
Knew not the fear of
man; yet in those woods,
And by those plenteous streams and mighty
lakes,
And on stupendous steppes of peerless plain,
And in the
rocky gloom of canyons deep,
Screened by the stony ribs of
mountains hoar
Which steeped their snowy peaks in purging cloud,

And down the continent where tropic suns
Warmed to her very heart
the mother earth,
And in the congeal'd north where silence self

Ached with intensity of stubborn frost,
There lived a soul more wild
than barbarous;
A tameless soul--the sunburnt savage free--
Free,
and untainted by the greed of gain:

Great Nature's man content with
Nature's food.
But hark! I hear her footsteps in the leaves--
And so my poem ends.

Enter_ IENA, _downcast.
My love! my love!
What! Iena in tears! your looks, like clouds,
O'erspread my joy which,
but a moment past,
Rose like the sun to high meridian.
Ah, how is
this? She trembles, and she starts,
And looks with wavering eyes
through oozing tears,
As she would fly from me. Why do you weep?
IENA. I weep, for I have come to say--farewell.
LEFROY. Farewell! I have fared well in love till now;
For you are
mine, and I am yours, so say
Farewell, farewell, a thousand times
farewell.
IENA. How many meanings