Gertrude of Wyoming. Part I

On Susquehana’s side, fair Wyoming!Although the wild-flower on thy ruined wallAnd roofless homes, a sad remembrance bringOf what thy gentle people did befall;Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of allThat see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania’s shore!

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,The happy shepherd swains had nought to doBut feed their flocks on green declivities,Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe,From morn till evening’s sweeter pastime grew,With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown,Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew;And aye those sunny mountains half-way downWould echo flageolet from some romantic town.

Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takesHis leave, how might you the flamingo seeDisporting like a meteor on the lakes—And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:And every sound of life was full of glee,From merry mock-bird’s song, or hum of men;While hearkening, fearing nought their revelry,The wild-deer arched his neck from glades, and thenUnhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crimeHeard, but in transatlantic story rung,For here the exile met from every clime,And spoke in friendship every distant tongue:Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung,Were but divided by the running brook;And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,On plains no sieging mine’s volcano shook,The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook.

Nor far some Andalusian sarabandWould sound to many a native roundelay—But who is he that yet a dearer landRemembers over hills and far away?Green Albin! what though he no more surveyThy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay,Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar!

Alas! poor Caledonia’s mountaineer,That want’s stern edict e’er, and feudal grief,Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!Yet found he here a home, and glad relief,And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:And England sent her men, of men the chief,Who taught those sires of Empire yet to be,To plant the tree of life,—to plant fair Freedom’s tree!

Here was not mingled in the city’s pompOf life’s extremes the grandeur and the gloom;Judgment awoke not here her dismal tromp,Nor sealed in blood a fellow-creature’s doom,Nor mourned the captive in a living tomb.One venerable man, beloved of all,Sufficed, where innocence was yet in bloom,To sway the strife, that seldom might befall:And Albert was their judge in patriarchal hall.

How reverend was the look, serenely aged,He bore, this gentle Pennsylvanian sire,Where all but kindly fervours were assuaged,Undimmed by weakness’ shade, or turbid ire!And though, amidst the calm of thought entire,Some high and haughty features might betrayA soul impetuous once, ’twas earthly fireThat fled composure’s intellectual ray,As Etna’s fires grow dim before the rising day.

I boast no song in magic wonders rife,But yet, oh, Nature! is there nought to prize,Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?And dwells in daylight truth’s salubrious skiesNo form with which the soul may sympathise?—Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mildThe parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,Or blest his noonday walk—she was his only child.

The rose of England bloomed on Gertrude’s cheek—What though these shades had seen her birth, her sireA Briton’s independence taught to seekFar western worlds; and there his household fireThe light of social love did long inspire,And many a halcyon day he lived to seeUnbroken but by one misfortune dire,When fate had reft his mutual heart—but sheWas gone—and Gertrude climbed a widowed father’s knee.

A loved bequest,—and I may half impart—To them that feel the strong paternal tie,How like a new existence to his heartThat living flower uprose beneath his eye,Dear as she was from cherub infancy,From hours when she would round his garden play,To time when as the ripening years went by,Her lovely mind could culture well repay,And more engaging grew; from pleasing day to day.

I may not paint those thousand infant charms;(Unconscious fascination, undesigned!)The orison repeated in his arms,For God to bless her sire and all mankind;The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con,(The playmate ere the teacher of her mind:)All uncompanioned else her heart had goneTill now, in Gertrude’s eyes, their ninth blue summer shone.

And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,An Indian from his bark approach their bower,Of buskined limb, and swarthy lineament;The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,And bracelets bound the arm that helped to lightA boy, who seemed, as he beside him went,Of Christian vesture, and complexion bright,Led by his dusky guide, like morning brought by night.

Yet pensive seemed the boy for one so young—The dimple from his polished cheek had fled;When, leaning on his forest-bow unstrung,The Oneyda warrior to the planter said,And laid his hand upon the stripling’s head,“Peace be to thee! my words this belt approve;The paths of peace my steps have hither led:This little nursling, take him to thy love,And shield the bird unfledged, since gone the parent dove.

“Christian! I am the foeman of thy foe;Our wampum league thy brethren did embrace:Upon the Michigan, three moons ago,We launched our pirogues for the bison chase,And with the Hurons planted for a space,With true and faithful hands, the olive-stalk;But snakes are in the bosoms of their race,And though they held with us a friendly talk,The hollow peace-tree fell beneath their tomahawk.

“It was encamping on the lake’s far port,A cry of Areouski broke our sleep,Where stormed an ambushed foe thy nation’s fort,And rapid, rapid whoops came o’er the deep;But long thy country’s war-sign on the steepAppeared through ghastly intervals of light,And deathfully their thunders seemed to sweep,Till utter darkness swallowed up the sight,As if a shower of blood had quenched the fiery fight.

“It slept—it rose again—on high their towerSprung upwards like a torch to light the skiesThen down again it rained an ember shower,And louder lamentations heard we rise:As when the evil Manitou that driesThe Ohio woods, consumes them in his ire,In vain the desolated panther flies,And howls amidst his wilderness of fire:Alas! too late, we reached and smote those Hurons dire!

“But as the fox beneath the nobler hound,So died their warriors by our battle-brand;And from the tree we, with her child, unboundA lonely mother of the Christian land:—Her lord—the captain of the British band—Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay.Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand;Upon her child she sobbed, and swooned away,Or shrieked unto the God to whom the Christians pray.

“Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowlsOf fever-balm and sweet sagamité:But she was journeying to the land of souls,And lifted up her dying head to prayThat we should bid an ancient friend conveyHer orphan to his home of England’s shore;—And take, she said, this token far away,To one that will remember us of yore,When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave’s Julia wore.

“And I, the eagle of my tribe, have rushedWith this lorn dove.”—A sage’s self-commandHad quelled the tears from Albert’s heart that gushed;But yet his cheek—his agitated hand—That showered upon the stranger of the landNo common boon, in grief but ill beguiledA soul that was not wont to be unmanned;“And stay,” he cried, “dear pilgrim of the wild,Preserver of my old, my boon companion’s child!—

“Child of a race whose name my bosom warms,On earth’s remotest bounds how welcome here?Whose mother oft, a child, has filled these arms,Young as thyself, and innocently dear,Whose grandsire was my early life’s compeer.Ah, happiest home of England’s happy clime!How beautiful e’en now thy scenes appear,As in the noon and sunshine of my prime!How gone like yesterday these thrice ten years of time!

“And, Julia! when thou wert like Gertrude now,Can I forget thee, favourite child of yore?Or thought I, in thy father’s house, when thouWert lightest hearted on his festive floor,And first of all at his hospitable doorTo meet and kiss me at my journey’s end?But where was I when Waldegrave was no more?And thou didst pale thy gentle head extendIn woes, that e’en the tribe of deserts was thy friend?”

He said—and strained unto his heart the boy;—Far differently, the mute Oneyda tookHis calumet of peace, and cup of joy;As monumental bronze unchanged his look;A soul that pity touched, but never shook;Trained from his tree-rocked cradle to his bierThe fierce extremes of good and ill to brookImpassive—fearing but the shame of fear—A stoic of the woods—a man without a tear.

Yet deem not goodness on the savage stockOf Outalissi’s heart disdained to grow;As lives the oak unwithered on the rockBy storms above, and barrenness below;He scorned his own, who felt another’s woe:And ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung,Or laced his moccasins, in act to go,A song of parting to the boy he sung,Who slept on Albert’s couch, nor heard his friendly tongue.

“Sleep, wearied one! and in the dreaming landShouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet.Oh! tell her spirit, that the white man’s handHath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet;While I in lonely wilderness shall greetThy little foot-prints—or by traces knowThe fountain, where at noon I thought it sweetTo feed thee with the quarry of my bow,And poured the lotus-horn, or slew the mountain roe.

“Adieu! sweet scion of the rising sun!But should affliction’s storms thy blossom mockThen come again—my own adopted one!And I will graft thee on a noble stock:The crocodile, the condor of the rock,Shall be the pastime of thy sylvan wars;And I will teach thee, in the battle’s shock,To pay with Huron blood thy father’s scars,And gratulate his soul rejoicing in the stars!”

So finished he the rhyme (howe’er uncouth)That true to nature’s fervid feelings ran;(And song is but the eloquence of truth:)Then forth uprose that lone way-faring man;But dauntless he, nor chart, nor journey’s planIn woods required, whose trainèd eye was keenAs eagle of the wilderness, to scanHis path, by mountain, swamp, or deep ravine,Or ken far friendly huts on good savannahs green.

Old Albert saw him from the valley’s side—His pirogue launched—his pilgrimage begun—Far, like the red-bird’s wing he seemed to glide;Then dived, and vanished in the woodlands dun.Oft, to that spot by tender memory won,Would Albert climb the promontory’s height,If but a dim sail glimmered in the sun;But never more, to bless his longing sight,Was Outalissi hailed, with bark and plumage bright.

See Notes at the end of the Volume.