Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/203

1830-40.] FREDERICK W. THOMAS. 187 While father plowed with rifle at his back, Or sought the glutted foe through many a devious track. How cautiously, yet fearlessly, that boy Would search the forest for the wild beast's lair, And lift his rifle Avith a hurried joy, If chance he spied the Indian lurking there : And should they bear him prisoner from the fight, While they are sleeping, in the dead midnight, He slips the thongs that bind him to the tree. And leaving death with them, bounds home right happily. Before the mother, bursting through the door, The red man rushes where her infants rest; O God ! he hurls them on the cabin floor ! While she, down kneeling, clasps them to her breast. How he exults and revels in her woe, And lifts the weapon, yet delays the blow ; Ha ! that report ! behold ! he reels ! he dies ! And quickly to her arms the husband — father — flies. In the long winter eve, their cabin fast, The big logs blazing in the chimney wide — They'd hear the Indian howling, or the blast. And deem themselves in castellated pride : Then would the fearless forester disclose Most strange adventures with his sylvan foes, Of how his arts did over theirs prevail, And how he followed far upon their bloody trail. And it was happiness, they said, to stand. When summer smiled upon them in the wood. And see their little clearing there ex- pand. And be the masters of the solitude. Danger was but excitement ; and when came The tide of emigration, life grew tame ; Then would they seek some unknown wild anew. And soon, above the trees, the smoke was curling blue. THE RED MAN. How patient was that red man of the wood ! Not like the white man, garrulous of ill — Starving ! who heard his faintest wish for food ? Sleeping upon the snow-drift on the hill ! Who heard him chide the blast, or say 'twas cold. His wounds are freezing! is theano;uish told ? Tell him his child was murdered with its mother ! He seems like carved out stone that has no woe to smother. With front erect, up-looking, dignified — Behold high Hecla in eternal snows ! Yet while the raging tempest is defied, Deep in its bosom how the pent flame glows ! And when it bursts forth in its fiery wrath ! How melts the ice-hill from its fearful path. As on it rolls, unquench'd, and all un- tamed ! — Thus was it with that chief when his wild passions flamed.