XVIII.
"But great Cawtantowit, on his pinions still,
O'er the lone earth majestically sprung,
And whispered to the mountain, vale and hill,
And with new life the teeming regions rung;
The feathered songsters tune their carols shrill,
Herds upon herds the plain and mountain throng;
In the still pools the cunning beavers toil,
And the armed seseks[1] their strong folds uncoil.
XIX.
"Yet man was not.—Then great Cawtantowit spoke
To the hard mountain crags and called for man:
And sculptured, breathing, from the cleaving rock,
Sprang the armed warrior, and a strife began
With living things.—Hard as his native block,
Was his stone heart, and through it ran
Blood cold as ice—and the Great Spirit struck
This cruel man, and him to atoms broke.
XX.
"Then He the oak, of fibre hard and fine,
With the first red man's soul and form endowed,
And woman made he of the tapering pine,
Which 'neath that oak in peaceful beauty bowed;
She on the red man's bosom did recline,
Like the bright rainbow on the thunder-cloud.
And the Great Spirit saw his work divine,
And on the pair let fall His smile benign.
XXI.
"He gave them all these forests far and near,
The forms that fly, and those that creeping go,
The healthful fountains, and the rivers clear,
And all the broods that sport the waves below;
- ↑ Sesek—rattlesnake.
