Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams,

What keen desires, what cherished schemes,

What hopes, that time may not recall, Are darkened by that chieftain's fall! Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,

To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the Church's foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the Church's sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance dearer than his life,

The fiery-souled Castine? 17
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes,
His long, thin frame as ague shakes;
And loathing hate is in his eye,
As from his lips these words of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear,

'The soul that sinneth shall surely
die ! "

She stands, as stands the stricken deer,
Checked midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon his eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,

Between him and his hiding-place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
"Save me, O holy man !" - her cry

Fills all the void, as if a tongue, Unseen, from rib and rafter hung, Thrilling with mortal agony; Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's knee,

And her eye looks fearfully into his

Ан, weary Priest ! - with pale hands pressed

On thy throbbing brow of pain, Baffled in thy life-long quest,

Overworn with toiling vain, How ill thy troubled musings fit The holy quiet of a breast

With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.

Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings

Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along,
Fading hopes for whose success

It were sin to breathe a prayer ;· Schemes which Heaven may bless,

Fears which darken to despair. Hoary priest! thy dream is done Of a hundred red tribes won

never

And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown,

On wigwam-log and tree and stone. Black with the grime of paint and dust, Spotted and streaked with human gore,

A grim and naked head is thrust

Within the chapel-door. "Ha-Bomazeen!-In God's name say, What mean these sounds of bloody fray?" Silent, the Indian points his hand

To where across the echoing glen
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band,
And Moulton with his men.
"Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen?
Where are De Rouville 18 and Castine,
And where the braves of Sawga's queen?"
"Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,

The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
Castine with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw,
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone.”

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other
chase.

One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, For a last vain struggle for cherished life,

The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd

13

Of evil seen and done, Of scalps brought home by his savage flock

From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock In the Church's service won.

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, As scowling on the priest he looks: "Cowesass- -cowesass- tawhich wessaseen ?19

Let my father look upon Bomazeen, — My father's heart is the heart of a squaw, But mine is so hard that it does not thaw; Let my father ask his God to make

A dance and a feast for a great saga

Quenching, with reckless hand in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven,
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure Heaven
The holy only enter in !
O, by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the Pit,
And the pained souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The Paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,

And flowing with its crystal river,
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car
The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;
Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
Glimpses on the soldiers' sight
A thing of human shape I ween,
For a moment only seen,
With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,
Shrieking, like a soul in pain,

From the world of light and breath,
Hurrying to its place again,
Spectre-like it vanisheth!

'Tis springtime on the eastern hills! Like torrents gush the summer rills; Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves

The bladed grass revives and lives,
Pushes the mouldering waste away,
And glimpses to the April day.
In kindly shower and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks ;

The southwest wind is warmly blowing,
And odors from the springing grass,
The pine-tree and the sassafras,

Are with it on its errands going.

A band is marching through the wood
Where rolls the Kennebec his flood,
The warriors of the wilderness,
Painted, and in their battle dress;
And with them one whose bearded cheek,
And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak

A wanderer from the shores of France.
A few long locks of scattering snow
Beneath a battered morion flow,
And from the rivets of the vest
Which girds in steel his ample breast,
The slanted sunbeams glance.

In the harsh outlines of his face
Passion and sin have left their trace;
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair,
No signs of weary age are there.

His step is firm, his eye is keen,
Nor years in broil and battle spent,
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent
The lordly frame of old Castine.

No purpose now of strife and blood
Urges the hoary veteran on :
The fire of conquest and the mood
Of chivalry have gone.
A mournful task is his, to lay

Within the earth the bones of those Who perished in that fearful day, When Norridgewock became the prey Of all unsparing foes.

Sadly and still, dark thoughts between,

Of coming vengeance mused Castine,
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen,
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks
Dig up their buried tomahawks

For firm defence or swift attack;
And him whose friendship formed the tie
Which held the stern self-exile back
From lapsing into savagery;
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance
Recalled a younger, happier day,
And prompted memory's fond essay,
To bridge the mighty waste which lay
Between his wild home and that gray,
Tall chateau of his native France,
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din,
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in,
And counted with its solemn toll
The masses for his father's soul.

15

And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught save ashes sodden and
dank;

And the birchen boats of the Nor-
ridgewock,

Tethered to tree and stump and rock,
Rotting along the river bank!
Blessed Mary! who is she

Leaning against that maple-tree?
But the fixed eyelid moveth not;
The sun upon her face burns hot,
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear
From the dry bough above her ear;
Dashing from rock and root its spray,

Close at her feet the river rushes;
The black bird's wing against her
brushes,

And sweetly through the hazel-bushes The robin's mellow music gushes; God save her! will she sleep alway?

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper: Wake, daughter, wake!" but

66

she stirs no limb:

The eye that looks on him is fixed and

dim;

And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no deeper,

Until the angel's oath is said, And the final blast of the trump goes forth To the graves of the sea and the graves of earth.

RUTH BONYTHON IS DEAD!

20

We had seen

wall

Is piled to heaven; and, through the narrow rift

Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet

Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind

Comes burdened with the everlasting

moan

Of forests and of far-off waterfalls,

mer sky,

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by

crags

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed

The high source of the Saco; and bewildered

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills,

Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud,

The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick

As meadow mole-hills, — the far sea of Casco,

A white gleam on the horizon of the east; Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods and hills;

Moosehillock's mountain range, and Kearsarge

Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun!

And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken

By the perpetual beating of the falls
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had

tracked

The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down

its rocks,

Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam

Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams

At midnight spanning with a bridge of

silver

The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls.

take

Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter

A delicate flower on whom had blown too long

Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice

And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay,

With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves

el's chance

Had thrown together in these wild north hills:

A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets,

Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see

its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.

It chanced That as we turned upon our homeward way, A drear northeastern storm came howling up

The valley of the Saco; and that girl