Felicia Hemans in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 25 1829/The Indian with his Dead Child
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 25, Pages 498-499
II.
THE INDIAN WITH HIS DEAD CHILD.*[1]
Then the hunter turn'd away from that scene,
Where the home of his fathers once had been,
And burning thoughts flash'd o'er his mind,
Of the white man's faith and love unkind.
Bryant.
In the silence of the midnight,
I journey with the dead:
In the darkness of the forest boughs,
A lonely path I tread.
But my heart is high and fearless,
As by mighty wings upborne;
The mountain-eagle hath not plumes
So strong as love and scorn.
I have raised thee from the grave-sod,
By the white man's path defiled;
On to th' ancestral wilderness
I bear thy dust, my child!
I have ask'd the ancient deserts
To give my dead a place,
Where the stately footsteps of the free
Alone should leave a trace:
And the rocking pines made answer—
Go, bring us back thine own!
And the streams from all the hunter's hills,
Rush'd with an echoing tone.
Thou shalt rest by sounding waters,
That yet untamed may roll;
The voices of those chainless ones
With joy shall fill thy soul.
In the silence of the midnight
I journey with the dead,
Where the arrows of my father's bow
Their falcon-flight have sped.
I have left the spoilers' dwellings
For evermore behind;
Unmingled with their household sounds,
For me shall sweep the wind.
Alone, amidst their hearth-fires,
I watch'd my child's decay;
Uncheer'd I saw the spirit-light
From his young eyes fade away.
When his head sank on my bosom,
When the death-sleep o'er him fell,
Was there one to say—"A friend is near?"
There was none!—Pale race, farewell!
To the forests, to the cedars,
To the warrior and his bow,
Back, back! I bore thee laughing thence,
—I bear thee slumbering now!
I bear him unto burial
With the mighty hunters gone;—
I shall hear thee in the forest-breeze,—
Thou wilt speak of joy, my son!
In the silence of the midnight
I journey with the dead;
But my heart is strong, my step is fleet,
My father's path I tread.
F. H.
- ↑
*"A striking display of Indian character occurred some years since in a town in Maine. An Indian of the Kennebeck tribe, remarkable for his good conduct, received a grant of land from the state, and fixed himself in a new township, where a number of families were settled. Though not ill treated, yet the common prejudice against Indians prevented any sympathy with him. This was shewn on the death of his only child, when none of the people came near him. Shortly after, he gave up his farm, dug up the body of his child, and carried it with him two hundred miles through the forest, to join the Canadian Indians."—Tudor’s Letters on the Eastern States of America.