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102

THE AMERICAN INDIAN'S SONG.

Home returning from our toils,
Thou shalt bear the tyger's spoils;
And we will sing our loudest strain
O'er the forest-tyrant slain!

Sometimes thou shalt pause to hear
The beauteous cardinal sing clear,
Where hoary oaks, by time decay'd,
Nod in the deep wood's pathless glade;
And the sun with bursting ray
Quivers on the branches grey.

By the river's craggy banks, O'erhung with stately cypress-ranks, Where the bush-bee* hums his song, Thy trim canoe shall graze along.

To-night at least, in this retreat, Stranger! rest thy wand'ring feet; To-morrow, with unerring bow,

To the deep thickets fearless we will go.

The bush-bee hives on shrubs and low trees.

MONOD Y,

WRITTEN

AT

MATLOCK.

MONODY,

WRITTEN AT

MATLOCK,

1791.

MATLOCK! amid thy hoary-hanging views,
Thy glens that smile sequester'd, and thy nooks
Which yon forsaken crag all dark o'erlooks,
Once more I meet the long-neglected Muse,
As erst when by the mossy brink and falls
Of solitary WENSBECK, or the side

Of CLYSDALE'S cliffs, where first her voice she try'd,
We wander'd in our youth.-Since then, the thralls
That wait life's upland road have chill'd her breast,
And much, as much they might, her wing depress'd-
Wan Indolence, resign'd, her dead'ning hand
Laid on her heart, and Fancy her cold wand
Dropp'd at the frown of fortune; yet once more

I call her, and once more her converse sweet,

1

'Mid the still limits of this wild retreat,
I woo;-if yet delightful as of yore
My heart she may revisit, nor deny
The soothing aid of some sweet melody!

I hail the rugged scene that bursts around—
I mark the wreathed roots, the saplings grey,
That bend o'er the dark DERWENT's wand'ring way;
I mark its stream, with peace-persuading sound,
That steals beneath the fading foliage pale,

Or, at the foot of frowning crags uprear'd,
Complains like one forsaken and unheard.
To me, it seems to tell the pensive tale

Of spring-time, and the summer days all flown-
And while sad autumn's voice e'en now I hear
Along the umbrage of the high-wood moan,
At intervals, whose shivering leaves fall sear;
Whilst o'er the groupe of pendant groves I view
The slowly-spreading tints of pining hue,

I think of poor Humanity's brief day,

How fast its blossoms fade, its summers speed away!

When first young Hope, a golden-tressed boy, Most musical his early madrigal

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