| |
| ON sunny slope and beechen swell, | |
| The shadowed light of evening fell; | |
| And, where the maple’s leaf was brown, | |
| With soft and silent lapse came down, | |
| The glory, that the wood receives, | 5 |
| At sunset, in its golden leaves. | |
| |
| Far upward in the mellow light | |
| Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, | |
| Around a far uplifted cone, | |
| In the warm blush of evening shone; | 10 |
| An image of the silver lakes, | |
| By which the Indian’s soul awakes. | |
| |
| But soon a funeral hymn was heard | |
| Where the soft breath of evening stirred | |
| The tall, gray forest; and a band | 15 |
| Of stern in heart, and strong in hand, | |
| Came winding down beside the wave, | |
| To lay the red chief in his grave. | |
| |
| They sang, that by his native bowers | |
| He stood, in the last moon of flowers, | 20 |
| And thirty snows had not yet shed | |
| Their glory on the warrior’s head; | |
| But, as the summer fruit decays, | |
| So died he in those naked days. | |
| |
| A dark cloak of the roebuck’s skin | 25 |
| Covered the warrior, and within | |
| Its heavy folds the weapons, made | |
| For the hard toils of war, were laid; | |
| The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, | |
| And the broad belt of shells and beads. | 30 |
| |
| Before, a dark-haired virgin train | |
| Chanted the death dirge of the slain; | |
| Behind, the long procession came | |
| Of hoary men and chiefs of fame, | |
| With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief, | 35 |
| Leading the war-horse of their chief. | |
| |
| Stripped of his proud and martial dress, | |
| Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, | |
| With darting eye, and nostril spread, | |
| And heavy and impatient tread, | 40 |
| He came; and oft that eye so proud | |
| Asked for his rider in the crowd. | |
| |
| They buried the dark chief; they freed | |
| Beside the grave his battle steed; | |
| And swift an arrow cleaved its way | 45 |
| To his stern heart! One piercing neigh | |
| Arose, and, on the dead man’s plain, | |
| The rider grasps his steed again. | |
| |
