The Indian with His Dead Child

In the silence of the midnightI journey with my dead;In the darkness of the forest boughsA lonely path I tread.

But my heart is high and fearless,As by mighty wings upborne;The mountain eagle hath not plumesSo strong as love and scorn.

I have raised thee from the grave-sod,By the white man’s path defiled;On to th’ ancestral wilderness,I bear thy dust, my child!

I have ask’d the ancient desertsTo give my dead a place,Where the stately footsteps of the freeAlone should leave a trace.

And the tossing pines made answer--“Go, bring us back thine own!”And the streams from all the hunters’ hills,Rush’d with an echoing tone.

Thou shalt rest by sounding watersThat yet untamed may roll;The voices of that chainless hostWith joy shall fill thy soul.

In the silence of the midnightI journey with the dead,Where the arrows of my father’s bowTheir falcon-flight have sped.

I have left the spoilers’ dwellingsFor evermore behind;Unmingled with their household sounds,For me shall sweep the wind.

Alone, amidst their hearth-fires,I watch’d my child’s decay,Uncheer’d I saw the spirit-lightFrom his young eyes fade away.

When his head sank on my bosom,When the death-sleep o’er him fell,Was there one to say, “A friend is near?”There was none!--pale race, farewell!

To the forests, to the cedars,To the warrior and his bow,Back, back!--I bore thee laughing thence,I bear thee slumbering now!

I bear thee unto burialWith the mighty hunters gone;I shall hear thee in the forest breeze,Thou wilt speak of joy, my son!

In the silence of the midnightI journey with the dead;But my heart is strong, my step is fleet,My fathers’ path I tread.