DEATH OF GERTRUDE AND THE LAMENT OF OUTALISSI.
HUSH'D were his Gertrude's lips! but still their bland
And beautiful expression seem'd to melt
With love that could not die! and still his hand
She presses to the heart no more that felt.
Ah heart! where once each fond affection dwelt,
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair.
Mute, gazing, agonizing as he knelt,-
Of them that stood encircling his despair,
He heard some friendly words;-but knew not what they were.
For now, to mourn their judge and child, arrives
A faithful band. With solemn rites between,
'T was sung, how they were lovely in their lives,
And in their deaths had not divided been.
Touch'd by the music, and the melting scene,
Was scarce one tearless eye amidst the crowd:-
Stern warriors, resting on their swords, were seen
To veil their eyes, as pass'd each much-lov'd shroud-
While woman's softer soul in woe dissolv'd aloud.
Then mournfully the parting bugle bid
Its farewell, o'er the grave of worth and truth;
Prone to the dust, afflicted Waldegrave hid
His face on earth;-him watch'd, in gloomy ruth,
His woodland guide: but words had none to soothe
The grief that knew not consolation's name:
Casting his Indian mantle o'er the youth,
He watch'd, beneath its folds, each burst that came
Convulsive, ague-like, across his shuddering frame!
"And I could weep;" th' Oneyda chief
His descant wildly thus begun;
"But that I may not stain with grief
The death-song of my father's son!
Or bow his head in woe;
For by my wrongs, and by my wrath!
To-morrow Areouski's breath,
(That fires yon heav'n with storms of death),
Shall light us to the foe:
And we shall share, my Christian boy!
The foeman's blood, the avenger's joy!
"But thee, my flower, whose breath was given
By milder genii o'er the deep,
The spirits of the white man's heaven
Forbid not thee to weep:
Nor will the Christian host,
Nor will thy father's spirit grieve
To see thee, on the battle's eve,
Lamenting take a mournful leave
Of her who loved thee most:
She was the rainbow to thy sight!
Thy sun-thy heaven-of lost delight!
"To-morrow let us do or die!
But when the bolt of death is hurled,
Ah! whither then with thee to fly,
Shall Outalissi roam the world?
Seek we thy once loved home?
The hand is gone that cropt its flowers:
Unheard their clock repeats its hours!
Cold is the hearth within their bow'rs!
And should we thither roam,
Its echoes and its empty tread
Would sound like voices from the dead!
66 Or shall we cross yon mountains blue,
Whose streams my kindred nation quaff'd ;
And by my side, in battle true,
A thousand warriors drew the shaft?
Ah! there in desolation cold,
The desert serpent dwells alone,
Where grass o'ergrows each mould'ring bone,
And stones themselves to ruin grown,
Like me, are death-like old.
Then seek we not their camp-for there
The silence dwells of my despair!
"But hark, the trump!-to-morrow thou
In glory's fires shalt dry thy tears:
Even from the land of shadows now
My father's awful ghost appears,
Amidst the clouds that round us roll;
He bids my soul for battle thirst-
He bids me dry the last-the first—
The only tears that ever burst
From Outalissi's soul;
Because I may not stain with grief
The death-song of an Indian chief."
OUR bugles sang truce-for the night-cloud had lowered
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain ;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track;
"T was autumn-and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.
Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.
Stay, stay with us-rest, thou art weary and worn;
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
THERE came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind beaten hill.
But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle of the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion,
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.
Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger,
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee;
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again in the green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!
Erin my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But alas! in a fair foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!
Oh cruel fate! will thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace-where no perils can chase me? Never again, shall my brothers embrace me?
They died to defend me, or live to deplore!
Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild wood?
Sisters and sire! did ye weep for its fall?
Where is the mother that looked on my childhood?
And where is the bosom friend, dearer than all?
Oh! my sad heart! long abandoned by pleasure,
Why did it doat on a fast fading treasure!
Tears like the rain-drop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.
Yet all its sad recollection suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw:
Erin! an exile bequeaths thee his blessing!
Land of my forefathers! Erin go bragh!
Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,
Green be thy fields-sweetest isle of the ocean!
And thy harp striking bards sing aloud with devotion—
Erin mavournin!-Erin go bragh!
LINES WRITTEN ON VISITING A SCENE IN ARGYLESHIRE.
AT the silence of twilight's contemplative hour,
I have mused in a sorrowful mood,
On the wind shaken weeds that embosom the bower,
Where the home of my forefathers stood.
All ruined and wild is their roofless abode,
And lonely the dark raven's sheltering tree;
And travelled by few is the grass-covered road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode
To his hills that encircle the sea.
Yet wandering, I found on my ruinous walk,
By the dial-stone aged and green,
One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk,
To mark where a garden had been.
Like a brotherless hermit, the last of its race,
All wild in the silence of Nature, it drew,
From each wandering sunbeam, a lonely embrace;
For the night-weed and thorn overshadowed the place,
Where the flower of my forefathers grew.
Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall;
But patience shall never depart!
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
In the days of delusion by fancy combined,
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind.
Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore!
Through the perils of chance, and the scowl of disdain
May thy front be unaltered, thy courage elate!
Yea! even the name I have worshipped in vain
Shall awake not the sigh of remembrance again;
To bear is to conquer our fate.
YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 't is true,
Yet, wildings of nature, I doat upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teem'd around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladden'd my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.
I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams, And of broken glades breathing their balm,
While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote, And the deep mellow crush of the wood pigeon's note Made music that sweeten'd the calm.
Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune
Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June:
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,
Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.
Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water lily restore;
What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks
In the vetches that tangled their shore.
Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear
Had scathed my existence's bloom;
Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.
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