None have died From earth's first revolution to the present, In gloom and darkness was the poet lost His cradle and his school of discipline The dark cold ground in which the seed is sown, That struggling upward, slowly germinates Until it bursts into the shining air. Not Christ alone has risen, but all have risen; Which lives in God, immortal as himself. THERE IS NO DEATH.-LORD LYTTON. THERE is no death! The stars go down And bright in Heaven's jewelled crown There is no death! The dust we tread Shall change beneath the summer showera To golden grain or mellowed fruit, Or rainbow-tinted flowers. The granite rocks disorganize, And feed the hungry moss they bear; There is no death! The leaves may fall, There is no death! An angel form He leaves our hearts all desolate, He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers; The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones, Around the tree of life. Where'er he sees a smile too bright, Or heart too pure for taint and vice, He bears it to that world of light, Born unto that undying life, They leave us but to come again; And ever near us, though unseen, For all the boundless universe THE INDIANS.-JOSEPH STORY. THERE is, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much which may be urged to excuso EE* their own atrocities; much in their characters, which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow, but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone for ever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter's trace and dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the western skies. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villagers, and warriors, and youths; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which has eaten into their heart-cores-a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated-a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region, which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes, the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them,-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove further, not distant, It is to the general burial-ground of their nor unseen. race. Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a fate much that we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; much of pity mingling with indignation; much of doubt and misgiving as to the past; much of painful recollections; much of dark forebodings. THE NANTUCKET SKIPPER.-J. T. FIELDS. MANY a long, long year ago, Nantucket skippers had a plan Of finding out, though "lying low," How near New York their schooners ran. They greased the lead before it fell, They always guessed their reckoning right. A skipper gray, whose eyes were dim, Snug in his berth, at eight o'clock, This ancient skipper might be found; The watch on deck would now and then One night 'twas Jotham Marden's watch, "We're all a set of stupid fools, To think the skipper knows, by tasting, What ground he's on; Nantucket schools Don't teach such stuff, with all their basting P And so he took the well greased-lead, And rubbed it o'er a box of earth That stood on deck,- And then he sought the skipper's berth. "Where are we now, sir? Please to taste." The skipper stormed, and tore his hair, Thrust on his boots, and roared to Marden, "Nantucket's sunk, and here we are Right over old Marm Hackett's garden!" |