1841.
30. "Pocahontas, and Other Poems."
I had great pleasure in searching out materials for the principal poem in this volume of two hundred and eighty-three pages. It was heightened from having once visited the ruins of the church at Jamestown, where the Princess Pocahontas, the first convert from the heathen tribes, received the rite of baptism in the first temple consecrated to God in the Western wilderness. This event gave a worthy subject to the spirited pencil of Chapman, among the great national paintings in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington.
It was the touching custom of the colonists who landed here in the spring of 1607, to adorn their place of worship with wild flowers, and to mingle a prayer for the "dear Mother-country" with their Sabbath services, which were conducted by the Rev. Mr. Hunt, called, by historians of the times, "the morning-star of the Church." By him, and in the same edifice, the nuptials of Pocahontas with the cavalier, John Rolfe, were solemnized. A world of early vernal flowers enwreathed the rough pine columns, and strewed the floor, loading the air with fragrance. The white and red-browed people, mingling, rejoiced together. Powhatan, the powerful king of thirty nations, smiled propitiously on his daughters bridal; while his brother, the lofty
