Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/39

Rh .

Forgotten race,—farewell! Your haunts we tread,—

Our mighty rivers speak your words of yore,

Our mountains wear them on their misty head,

Our sounding cataracts hurl them to the shore;

But on the lake your flashing oar is still,

Hush'd is your hunter's cry on dale and hill,—

Your arrow stays the eagle's flight no more;

And ye, like troubled shadows, sink to rest

In unremember'd tombs, unpitied and unblest.

.

The council-fires are quench'd, that erst so red

Their midnight volume 'mid the groves entwin'd;

King, stately chief, and warrior-host, are dead,—

Nor remnant, nor memorial, left behind:

But thou, O forest-princess, true of heart,

When o'er our fathers wav'd destruction's dart,

Shall in their children's loving hearts be shrin'd;

Pure, lonely star, o'er dark oblivion's wave,

It is not meet thy name should moulder in the grave.