Hark! is that the angry howl Of the wolf, the hills among? Or the hooting of the owl,

On his leafy cradle swung? Quickly glancing, to and fro, Listening to each sound they go Round the columns of the pine,

Indistinct, in shadow, seeming Like some old and pillared shrine; With the soft and white moonshine, Round the foliage-tracery shed Of each column's branching head, For its lamps of worship gleaming! And the sounds awakened there,

In the pine-leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air,
For the anthem's dying fall
Lingering round some temple's wall!
Niche and cornice round and round
Wailing like the ghost of sound!
Is not Nature's worship thus,
Ceaseless ever, going on?
Hath it not a voice for us

In the thunder, or the tone
Of the leaf-harp faint and small,
Speaking to the unsealed ear
Words of blended love and fear,
Of the mighty Soul of all?

A cottage hidden in the wood,

Red through its seams a light is glowing, On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude, A narrow lustre throwing.

"Who's there?" a clear, firm voice demands;

"Hold, Ruth, 't is I, the Saga-
more !"

Quick, at the summons, hasty hands
Unclose the bolted door;

And on the outlaw's daughter shine
The flashes of the kindled pine.

Tall and erect the maiden stands,

Like some young priestess of the wood,
The freeborn child of Solitude,

And bearing still the wild and rude,
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands.
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain
More from the sunshine than the rain;
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting,
A pure white brow into light is starting;
And, where the folds of her blanket sever,
Are a neck and bosom as white as ever
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river.
But in the convulsive quiver and grip
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip,
There is something painful and sad to

The sum of Indian happiness! A wigwam, where the warm sunshine Looks in among the groves of pine, A stream, where, round thy light canoe, The trout and salmon dart in view, And the fair girl, before thee now, Spreading thy mat with hand of snow, Or plying, in the dews of morn, Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn, Or offering up, at eve, to thee, Thy birchen dish of hominy!

From the rude board of Bonython,
Venison and succotash have gone,
For long these dwellers of the wood
Have felt the gnawing want of food.
Butuntasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer,
With head averted, yet ready ear,
She stands by the side of her austere
sire,

Feeding, at times, the unequal fire With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine tree,

Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls,

And over its inmates three.

From Sagamore Bonython's hunting flask The fire-water burns at the lip of Megone:

"Will the Sachem hear what his father

shall ask?

Will he make his mark, that it may be known,

On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land, From the Sachem's own, to his father's hand?"

The fire-water shines in the Indian's eyes, As he rises, the white man's bidding to do:

5

"Wuttamuttata wise,

For the water he drinks is strong and

new,

Mogg's heart is great! will he shut his

hand,

When his father asks for a little land?" — With unsteady fingers, the Indian has drawn

On the parchment the shape of a hunter's bow,

"Boon water,

more John!

boon water, Saga

Wuttamuttata, -weekan! our hearts will grow !

He drinks yet deeper, he mutters

low,

He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, His head falls down on his naked breast,

He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest.

"Humph- drunk as a beast!" - and Bonython's brow

Is darker than ever with evil thought"The fool has signed his warrant; but how

And when shall the deed be wrought? Speak, Ruth! why, what the devil is there,

To fix thy gaze in that empty air?. Speak, Ruth! by my soul, if I thought that tear,

Which shames thyself and our purpose here,

Were shed for that cursed and palefaced dog,

Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg,

And whose beastly soul is in Satan's keeping,

This this! - he dashes his hand

to clasp

His daughter's cold, damp hand in his. Ruth startles from her father's grasp, As if each nerve and muscle felt, Instinctively, the touch of guilt, Through all their subtle sympathies.

He points her to the sleeping Mogg: "What shall be done with yonder dog? Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine, The deed is signed and the land is mine; And this drunken fool is of use no more, Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth,

'T were Christian mercy to finish him, Ruth,

Now, while he lies like a beast on our floor,

If not for thine, at least for his sake,
Rather than let the poor dog awake
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride
Such a forest devil to run by his side, -
Such a Wetuomanit 12 as thou wouldst
make!"

He laughs at his jest. Hush- what is there?

Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell Too much for her ear of that deed of hell. She sees the knife, with its slaughter red, And the dark fingers clenching the bearskin bed!

What thoughts of horror and madness whirl

Through the burning brain of that fallen girl!

O, when the soul, once pure and high,
Is stricken down from Virtue's sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn,
And, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day,
Some lofty feelings linger still,

The strength to dare, the nerve to meet Whatever threatens with defeat Its all-indomitable will ! – But lacks the mean of mind and heart, Though eager for the gains of crime, Oft, at his chosen place and time,

The strength to bear his evil part;
And, shielded by his very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.

Ruth starts erect, with bloodshot eye,
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red firelight :- "Mogg must die!
Give me the knife!"- The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb, away,
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shad-
ows play.

A lifted arm, a tremulous blade,
Are dimly pictured in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark,
that cry

Again and again - he sees it fall,
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall!
He hears quick footsteps- -a shape
flits by

'Tis morning over Norridgewock,
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow,
That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer's light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
With pencil dipped in sunbeams
there,

And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky,-
Slumbers the mighty wilderness!
The oak, upon the windy hill,

eye

Its dark green burthen upward heaves

The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,

Against the birch's graceful stem,
And the rough walnut-bough receives
The sun upon its crowded leaves,

Each colored like a topaz gem;

And the tall maple wears with them The coronal, which autumn gives, The brief, bright sign of ruin near, The hectic of a dying year!

7

The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle, 18
While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with his slumbers come,
The tranquil skies of sunny France,
The peasant's harvest song and dance,
The vines around the hillsides wreathing
The soft airs midst their clusters breath-
ing,

The wings which dipped, the stars which shone

Within thy bosom, blue Garonne !
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall,
At morning spring and even-fall,

Sweet voices in the still air singing, — The chant of many a holy hymn, The solemn bell of vespers ringing, And hallowed torchlight falling dim

On pictured saint and seraphim! For here beneath him lies unrolled, Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold, A vision gorgeous as the dream Of the beatified may seem,

When, as his Church's legends say, Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,

The rapt enthusiast soars away
Unto a brighter world than this:
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale,
A moment's lifting of the veil !

Far eastward o'er the lovely bay,
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hillside slopes adown,
To where the sparkling waters play

Upon the yellow sands below; And shooting round the winding shores Of narrow capes, and isles which lie Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, With birchen boat and glancing oars,

The red men to their fishing go; While from their planting ground is borne The treasure of the golden corn,

By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow Wild through the locks which o'er them flow.

The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done, Sits on her bear-skin in the sun, Watching the huskers, with a smile