Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/87

For lightly, like an angel's dream,
    The trance of slumber fell,
Where innocence and holy love
    Maintain'd their guardian spell.

Another eve—another scroll.
    Wist ye what words it said?
Two words, two awful words it bore,
    The duel! and the dead!

The duel? and the dead? How dim
    Was that young mother's eye,
How fearful was her lengthen'd swoon,
    How wild her piercing cry.

There's many a wife whose bosom's lord
    Is in his prime laid low,
Ingulf'd beneath the wat'ry main,
    Where bitter tempests blow;

Or crush'd amid the battle-field,
    Where slaughter'd thousands rest;
Yet know they of the speechless pang
    That rives her bleeding breast?

Who lies so powerless on her couch,
    Transfix'd by sorrow's sting?
Her infant in its nurse's arms,
    Like a forgotten thing.

A dark-hair'd boy is at her side
    He lifts his eagle-eye: