Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/32

Rh Approach we not the same sepulchral bourne, Swift as the shadow fleets? What time have we to mourn?

A little time, thou found'st, O pagan king, A little space, to murmur and repine: Oh, bear a few brief months affliction's sting, And gaze despondent o'er the billowy brine, And then to the Great Spirit, dimly traced Through cloud and tempest, and with fear embraced, In doubt and mystery, thy breath resign; And to thy scorn'd and perish'd people go, From whose long-trampled dust our flowers and herbage grow.

Like the fallen leaves those forest-tribes have fled: Deep 'neath the turf their rusted weapon lies; No more their harvest lifts its golden head, Nor from their shaft the stricken red-deer flies: But from the far, far west, where holds, so hoarse, The lonely Oregon, its rock-strewn course, While old Pacific's sullen surge replies, Are heard their exiled murmurings, deep and low, Like one whose smitten soul departeth, full of wo.

I would ye were not, from your fathers' soil, Track'd like the dun wolf, ever in your breast The coal of vengeance and the curse of toil; I would we had not to your mad lip prest