Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/127

 IV.

Vaults o'er the thickets, and down yonder glen His antlers vanish; on yon shaggy height Sits the lone wolf, half-peering from his den, And howls regardless of the morning light; Unwonted sounds and a strange denizen Vex his repose; soon, cowering with affright, He shrinks away, for with a crackling sound, Yon hemlock bows and thunders to the ground.

V.

Who on the prostrate trunk has risen now, And does with cleaving steel the blows renew? Broad is the beaver on his manly brow, His mantle gray, his hosen azure blue; His feet are dripping with dissolving snow, His garments sated with the morning dew;— Our Founder is he, and, though changed by long And grievous suffering, steadfast still and strong.

VI.

Hard by yon little fountain clear and sheen, Whose swollen streamlet murmurs down the glade, Where groves of hemlock and of cedars green Oppose to northern storms a barricade, Stands the first mansion of his rude demesne, A slender wigwam by red Waban made; Their common shelter from the wintry blast; And place of rest when daily toils are past.

VII.

Yet from the storm he seldom shrinks away, With his own hands he labors now to rear A mansion, where his wife and children may, In happier days, partake the social cheer;