POEMS OF JAMES RYDER RANDALL
Here, ah here, the Indian maiden,
When with love and languor laden,
Sought thee, as the cells of Adenn;
With a world of gentle guesses,
In thy flood her floating tresses
Poured their cascade of caresses!
Here her hero from the rattle
Of the crimson blows of battle,
Slept beneath her soothing prattle—
Slept—but, ere the sun’s decline,
Like the lightning-riven pine,
And his heart’s blood, Silver Billow, swept its throbbings into thine.
When the sad and solemn moon
Muses o’er the lone lagoon,
And laughs the melancholy loon,
When the crooning winter breeze,
Hapless from the Hebrides,
Chafes the dead cathedral trees;
’Mid the vultures muffled wails,
Stifled by the panther hails
Shuddering up palmetto trails;
When the globe is wrought in sleep,
When the gnomes their vigils keep
By the mountain and the deep—
I can fancy phantom things,
On their thunder-tarnished wings,
Soaring with a fallen grandeur over the enchanted springs!
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