Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/23

Rh .

Music upon the breeze! the savage stays

His flying arrow, as the strain goes by;

He starts,—he listens,—lost in deep amaze,

Breath half-suppress'd, and lightning in his eye.

Have the clouds spoken? Do the spirits rise

From his dead fathers' graves, with wildering melodies?

Oft doth he muse, 'neath midnight's solemn sky,

On those deep tones, which, rising o'er the sod,

Bore forth, from hill to hill, the white man's hymn to God.

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News of the strangers stirr'd Powhatan's dreams,

The mighty monarch of the tribes that roam

A thousand forests, and on countless streams

Urge the swift bark and dare the cataract's foam;—

The haughtiest chieftains in his presence stood

Tame as a child, and from the field of blood

His war-cry thrill'd with fear the foeman's home:

His nod was death, his frown was fix'd as fate,

Unchangeable his love, invincible his hate.

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A forest-child, amid the flowers at play!

Her raven locks in strange profusion flowing,—

A sweet, wild girl, with eye of earnest ray,

And olive cheek, at each emotion glowing;