Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/16

Rh Spring robes the vales. With what a flood of light She holds her revels in this sunny clime; The flower-sown turf, like bossy velvet bright, The blossom'd trees exulting in their prime; The leaping streamlets in their joyous play, The birds that frolic mid the diamond spray, Or heavenward soar, with melody sublime: What wild enchantment spreads a fairy wing, As from their prisoning ships the enfranchised strangers spring.

Their tents are pitch'd, their spades have broke the soil, The strong oak thunders, as it topples down, Their lily-handed youths essay the toil, That from the forest rends its ancient crown: Where are your splendid halls, which ladies tread, Your lordly boards, with every luxury spread, Virginian sires—ye men of old renown? Though few and faint, your ever-living chain Holds in its grasp two worlds, across the surging main.

Yet who can tell what fearful pangs of wo Those weary-hearted colonists await, When to its home the parting ship must go, And leave them in their exile, desolate? Ah, who can paint the peril and the pain, The failing harvest, and the famish'd train, The wily foe, with ill-dissembled hate,