Poems Sigourney 1827/Defeat of the Queen of Narragansett, in 1679
DEFEAT OF THE QUEEN OF NARRAGANSETT, IN 1679.
Sound, sound the charge!—
Urge on the combatants to deeds of blood,—
Embroil the forest-children with the lords
Who seek their heritage.—The steep hill's base
Is white with tents.—Beyond,—with curling wave
Old Narragansett sweeps his swelling bay,—
Indignant that his shores so oft resound
The din of warfare,—and that murder's tide
Curdles in those pure waters, which unstain'd
Had flow'd from their Creation.—
See!—they come!—
They haste to battle.—One, with volleying flash,
Whose wreathed smoke involves their rushing lines,—
The other but with quiver, and bare breast,
And lion heart.—Ah!—the contending din,
The shock,—the shout,—the revelry of war,—
I cannot sing.—They ask a bolder lay,—
A firmer hand.—There are, who can behold
God's image marr'd,—and call it glorious strife.
And godlike victory.—There are, who love
The trumpet's clangour,—and the hoarse response
Of the death groan.—I cannot strike the lyre
That breathes of war.—It seems to me that death
Doth his own work so mightily, that man
Need aid him not.—
Even in the time of peace,
The dance of pleasure, and the bloom of health,
He smites his victims oft enough, to sooth
The hater of his kind.—The longest lease
Which Earth's frail tenant holds, his fourscore years
Of labour and of sorrow, are brief space
To do the work of an Eternity.—
And can it be that I have need to tell
Who were the conquerors,—or whose bodies lay
Strewn thick as autumn leaves upon the soil
That gave them birth?—Dark was the flight of souls
From that stain'd field,—for few would bow to bear
The captive's yoke.—Yet on their haggard brows
Who drank the cup of servitude, it seem'd
Death sate in bitterness, more than on those
Whose mangled forms beneath the courser's heel
Writhed in brief agony.—
But who is she,
Of such majestic port,—whose proud eye seems
As if her spirit equally contemn'd
Both life and death?—Is this the widow'd queen
Who for her people, and her children's rights,
Her simple shelter, and her husband's tomb
Stood boldly forth?—Her foes admiring mark
Her high demeanour, and with deference ask
For her request.—"Due treatment to a queen,
And to a woman's honour."—
It would seem
As if those lips by Nature had been taught
The accent of command.—But when she saw
That in her victor's breasts compassion wrought,
A gentle tone of soft entreaty woke,—
"I ask my children's life."—
—Ah!—there spoke forth
Her woman's nature.—The demand was first
What haughty Philip's representative,
A nation's guardian, and a warrior-queen,
Was bound to stipulate.—That boon obtain'd,
Affection urged its claim,—and rushing brought
The first, last wish of every mother's heart,—
Her children.—
—Spirits of the brave and free!—
Sons of my native state!—Ye circled round
That queen in her adversity.—High souls!—
In warfare lions,—but in pity mild
As the shorn lamb;—ye gave that sacred boon
Which Rome, in all her glory, sternly snatch'd
From Boadicea,—freedom.
But to what
Must she return?—What!—but a ruin'd realm,—
A broken sceptre,—a dejected race,—
Dispersing like the wild returnless winds.—
Say,—what should welcome her from the dread toil
And bloody deeds of battle?—The big tear
Of her sad outcast children,—the deep groan
Of ceaseless funerals,—famine's feeble wail,—
Lone widowhood,—and Philip's murmuring shade.—
Perchance, thou heard'st her sighs, and thy dark walls
Resounded her complaint,—thou lonely Tower!—*[1]
As through the thickets, and the pathless woods
Homeless she roam'd.—Now o'er thee, Mystery spreads
The brooding wing.—No gliding fox looks forth
From thy dark window, mid long-sighing grass
Like Morni's ruin'd tower.—No bittern screams,
Nor satyrs dance there,—nor the Cormorant
Unfolds her pinion on thy dizzy height
Nursing her young,—as in the palaces
Of desolate Babylon.—No echoed voice
Of moaning blast,—or sign of restless ghost
Reveals thy date.—But there, on that fair Isle,
Which as a gem, proud Narragansett wears,
Thou risest in thy frowning majesty
A wonder, and a parable,—to mock
The gazing throng.—Perchance the plundering hand
Of the fierce buccaneer, thy massy walls
And graceful arches rear'd;—or earlier days
And beings of some unknown race beheld
Thine infancy.—Light Fancy holds her sports
With giddy wing upon thy time-scathed crown
Peopling thy darksome chambers with strange groups
And spectral shapes;—but hoar Antiquity
Sublimely frowns upon the fairy toil,
Eluding, like the Sybil's fabled page,
The curious eye, and anxious search of man.
- ↑ * Newport Tower.