Now, all impression of the route,
In gurgling runnel, was washed out:
Anon, where deeper grew the shade
By intertwisted branches made,
Its crooked, winding course from sight
Was curtained by primeval night.
When the dark chieftain and his band,
Emerging from the swampy land,
Reached the dim borders of the grove
That glooms around the " Haunted Cove,"
The tempered glow of weary day,
Proclaiming the approach of night,
To gold transmuted leaf and spray
On upland-swell and wooded height;
And, calmly in the western sky,
Resplendent emblems of repose!
Grouped clouds more delicate of dye
Than tintings of the half-blown rose.
A moment, in the mellow light,
Shone beaded belt and hatchet bright;
A moment, from the yellow beam,
Ring, band and bracelet caught a gleam;
Then the dark wood of boughs inweaved,
Within its depths the troop received.
Beneath tall beeches, gray with eld,
Their labyrinthine course they held,
While well the hindmost of the line
From view concealed betraying sign;
Sending keen glances in the rear,
Lifting bowed herb and grassy spear,
Or doubling, when the oozy ground
Yielded beneath the lightest foot,
Like hunted foxes when the hound
And hunter are in hot pursuit.
The red-breast, perched in arbor green,
Sad minstrel of the quiet scene-
While hymning, for the dying sun,
Strains like a broken-hearted one,
Raised not her mottled wing to fly
As swept those silent warriors by.
The wood-cock, in his moist retreat,
Heard not the falling of their feet;
On his dark roost the gray owl slept;
Time with his drum the partridge kept,
Nor left the deer his watering-place,
So hushed, so noiseless was their pace.
Soon, partly veiled by bank and tree,
They scann'd the rolling Genesee,
Catching, within his channel'd bed,
Deep blushes from the sunset red,
And, stealing onward, reached a bay
Where light pirogues of white-wood lay,
Fashioned and hollowed out alone
By eating fire and gouge of stone.
Impelled by dip of tapering oar,
Sharp prows receded from the shore,
And, darting through the flashing waves
Afloat with full five hundred braves,
Soon rocked beneath the willows dank
That fringed the green, opposing bank.
Their leader breathed a low command,
And, guarding against hostile eye,
Their war-canoes were drawn to land,
And hidden in a thicket nigh;
Then, patiently, each warrior plumed,
With cautious tread, the march resumed.
Changed are the hills that overbrow
The vale in which those heroes trod,
And, rudely, hind and younker now
Look on their ashes, while the plough
Disturbs the burial-clod;
And, where those knights of bow and quiver
Paddled across the Pleasant River,
Burning to check in bold advance
The serried chivalry of France,
Over the deep and hurrying tide
Yon red bridge flings its arch of pride.
The forest, many-toned and wide,
Hath vanished from the river-side-
Gone are green roof and leafy screen
Like vapor yester-morning seen;
Fierce wasting flame and crashing steel
Rang, long ago, its funeral-peal.
Where browsed the elk in other days,
Fat herds in thymy meadows graze;
Where the fanged cougar, hating day,
Crouched by the deer-lick for his prey,
Heard is the tinkling bell of flocks,
And Ceres binds her wheaten shocks.
From waves, once clear as mountain rill, Where pike and bass the red man speared, And home his bark by torchlight steered, The finny tribe have disappeared,
Scared by the clacking mill;
And, proudly, on the ruined homes
Of perished tribes, stand lordly domes:
But why the light and shade contrast
Of present hour, and clouded past,
While notes of war are on the gale,
And the plot thickens of my tale?
The fires of day were fading fast
A deeper shade the forest cast,
While, through the hallowed place of graves, Moved a long line of belted braves.
The hand of reverence and love
Had broken the green cope above,
For the red forest tribes believe,
When comes the radiant sunset-time,
The hillocks of the dead receive
Bright visits from the Better Clime. Round each old tomb the paling rude, had been renewed,
From year to year,
And Indian girls had trained the vine,
Amid the pointed stakes, to twine,
And decked each space inclosed with flowers
Culled from the fairest woodland bowers.
Pale, velvet mosses over-crept
Tombs in which maid and mother slept,
And fragile infancy reposed,
A wilding flower untimely closed.
There, mindless of the coming years,
Lay old and venerated seers,
Carved amulets of mystic sway
Commingling with their wasted clay.
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