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1756
(Excerpt)
AROUND Sebago’s lonely lake | |
| There lingers not a breeze to break | |
| The mirror which its waters make. | |
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| The solemn pines along its shore, | |
| The firs which hang its gray rocks o’er, | 5 |
| Are painted on its glassy floor. | |
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| The sun looks o’er, with hazy eye, | |
| The snowy mountain-tops which lie | |
| Piled coldly up against the sky. | |
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| Dazzling and white! save where the bleak, | 10 |
| Wild winds have bared some splintering peak, | |
| Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. | |
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| Yet green are Saco’s banks below, | |
| And belts of spruce and cedar show, | |
| Dark fringing round those cones of snow. | 15 |
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| The earth hath felt the breath of spring, | |
| Though yet on her deliverer’s wing | |
| The lingering frosts of winter cling. | |
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| Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, | |
| And mildly from its sunny nooks | 20 |
| The blue eye of the violet looks. | |
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| And odors from the springing grass, | |
| The sweet birch and the sassafras, | |
| Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. | |
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| Her tokens of renewing care | 25 |
| Hath Nature scattered everywhere, | |
| In bud and flower, and warmer air. | |
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| But in their hour of bitterness, | |
| What reck the broken Sokokis, | |
| Beside their slaughtered chief, of this? | 30 |
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| The turf’s red stain is yet undried,— | |
| Scarce have the death-shot echoes died | |
| Along Sebago’s wooded side: | |
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| And silent now the hunters stand, | |
| Grouped darkly, where a swell of land | 35 |
| Slopes upward from the lake’s white sand. | |
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| Fire and the axe have swept it bare, | |
| Save one lone beech, unclosing there | |
| Its light leaves in the vernal air. | |
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| With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, | 40 |
| They break the damp turf at its foot, | |
| And bare its coiled and twisted root. | |
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| They heave the stubborn trunk aside, | |
| The firm roots from the earth divide,— | |
| The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. | 45 |
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| And there the fallen chief is laid, | |
| In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed, | |
| And girded with his wampum-braid. | |
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| The silver cross he loved is pressed | |
| Beneath the heavy arms, which rest | 50 |
| Upon his scarred and naked breast. | |
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| ’T is done: the roots are backward sent, | |
| The beechen-tree stands up unbent,— | |
| The Indian’s fitting monument! * * * * * | |
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