Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/244

 228 WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. [1830-40. DANIEL BOONE.* Ha ! how the woods give way before the step Of these new-comers ! What a sicken- ing smell CHngs round my cabin, wafted from their town Ten miles away ! But yesterday I heard A stranger's gun sound in the loneliest glen That yet remains to me ; and when I cHmbed The mountain there, and stood alone, alone ! Upon its top amid the sounding clouds, And proudly thought that I was first to crown That mighty mountain with a human soul, Another's foot-print in the airy sand Smote my unwilling eyes, and I at once Was scepterless, unthroned, there beaten back To restless thought again. This cannot last: For I am of the mould that loathes to breathe The air of multitudes, I must respire The Universe alone, and hear, alone, Its Lord walking the ancient wilderness ; And this, because He made me so — no more. I must away : for action is my life ; And it is base to triumph in a Past, However big with mighty circumstance. Danger full-faced and large heroic deed, If yet a Future calls. It calls to me. What if some seventy years have thinned this hair, And dimmed this sight, and made the blood roll on Less riotous between the banks of life? — This heart hath vigor yet, and still the woods Have voices for my ear; and stiU the stream Makes music in my thought ; and every hour Can show some a%vful miracle performed Within the wilderness ; and Danger still Leans proudly o'er the mountain's dizzy crag, Bathing his forehead in the passing cloud, And calls to me with a most taunting voice To join him there. He shall not call in vain. Yes ! Surely I must go, and drink anew The splendor that is in the pathless woods. And wear the blue sky as a coronal, And bid the torrent sound my conquering march, And ponder far away from all that mars The everlasting wonder of the world, And with each dewy morning wake and feel As though that world, so fresh, so beautiful With sunrise and the mist, had just been made. Farewell, O dweller of the towns ! One State Have I made eminent within the wild. And men from me have that which they call "Peace:" Still do the generations press for room. And surely they shall have it. Tell them this : Say " Boone, the old State-Builder, hath gone forth Again, close on the sunset ; and that there He gives due challenge to that Indian race Whose lease to this majestic laud, misused, It hath pleased God to cancel. There he works — Away from all his kind, but for his kind — Unseen, as Ocean's current works unseen, Piling huge deltas up, where men may rear Their cities pillai*ed fair, with many a mai't And stately dome o'ershadowing" — should they ask
 * Inscribed to Cassius M. Clay.