Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/36

 LXX.

"Right weleome to the red man's lodge shall be His pale-faced brother, safe from Sachems pale; Waban's nausamp and venison shall be free  When hunger craves, and, when his store shall fail, His dart is true, and swift and far will he  Pursue the bounding deer o'er hill and dale;— When melts the snow we may together raise, On Seekonk's banks, our common field of maize."

LXXI.

Williams replied, "My brother sure is kind, But his red friends are doubtless with him here; And they may teach my kindred, left behind,  To track my footsteps through the forest drear;— To journey homeward I have little mind;  My course is with the sun to wilds less near, Where I would form, if granted the domain, A tribe which never should the soul enchain."

LXXII.

"Alone is Waban," was the sad reply; "His wife and child have to that country gone Where go our spirits when our bodies die, And left thy brother in his lodge alone: He goes by day to catch the beavers shy,  And sits by night in his still house to moan, And much 'twould please him should the wanderer come, And tell him where the loved ones' spirits roam."

LXXIII.

"Brother, I thank thee—thou art kind indeed," Our Founder said—"and with thee I will go; Would that my brethren of the Christian creed Did half thy charity and goodness know!