And, guarded by an escort brave,
Led by the Night-Hawk of his clan,
De Grai, through swamp and bosky dell,
Pursued a path that parallel
With the dark river ran.
While on, the scouting party fared,
Old Can-ne-hoot for march prepared,
With the main body of his braves,
To guard his nation's hallowed graves.
"Loved grove, in which our dead are laid,—
Where droop long boughs their beds to shade,
Will be our place of ambuscade;
And those degenerate hounds
May Ut-co bear to realms of night,
Who will not like their fathers fight
For home and hunting-lands in sight
Of those green, mossy mounds !"
Thus speaking, by a low, shrill whoop,
The chief in single file his troop
Formed, eager for the fray:
A swamp, of depth unsunn'd and dread,
In rear of his rude castle spread;
And thither the red monarch led,
With rapid, light and stag-like tread,
His picturesque array.
Danger's black cloud comes rolling from the north, And gleams of lightning round its edges play; But tameless sons of Liberty go forth,
In thicket seldom visited by day,
To meet the vaunting spoilers on their way:
Back, Yonnondio!-ere your knightly crest
Is shorn of half its glory in the fray :
The lords, from whom your monarch fain would With iron hand a realm, are Romans of the West.
Their march no glad spectator cheered;
No helmet shone, no war-horse reared,
Nor martial instrument was heard,
Nor banner by the breeze was stirred:
Their feet so lightly touched the ground
That not an echo woke to sound;
And, glittering not with vain display,
They moved like shadows on their way,
Or misty shapes that fleetly glide
When winds disturb the mountain-side.
Sad non-combatants, left behind,
Gazed while a trace could be defined
Of that long line of warriors grim,
Erect of port, and lithe of limb;
And when they vanished through
The dusky portals of the wood,
In groups the young and helpless stood
Some form beloved to view.
The devious way on which they marched,
By braided boughs was overarched;
And, right and left, spread far away
Fens, only lit by fire-fly's ray,
Dark with a tangled growth of vine,
Black ash, huge water-oak and pine,
Mixed with red cedar, mossed and old,
Set firmly in the watery mould.
Here, covered with a slime of green,
Stagnant and turbid pools were seen
Edged round with wild, aquatic weeds,
Long-bladed flag and clustering reeds,
Pond-lilies, oily-leaved and pale,
Red willow and the alder frail :
There, skeletons of groves gone by,
Sad objects to poetic eye!
Like monarchs by the battle-blast
Assailed and overthrown at last,
Wasted and torn in bough and stem,
And robbed of leaf-wrought diadem,
Lay rotting in their barky mail,
Indifferent to sun and gale.
Deep hollows in the miry clay,
Marked where their roots once spread away,
Now mixed with many a rugged mound
Formed when their fastenings were unbound,
Or wrenched, like gossamer, in twain,
By the wild, rushing hurricane.
A stranger, though in woodcraft taught,
Would find that skill availed him nought
In that dark thicket, if astray
By hunted quarry lured away,
Though well each haunt and covert lone
To the brown forest-child was known.
Extending to its far-off bound,
A war-path, through the centre, wound,
So blind that practiced eye in vain,
For mark to guide the foot, would strain.
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