And end in Ocean's billows evermore;
So we, if youthful years were e'er restored,
Or homes of love might tenant once again,
Should heedless pass our most unvalued hours,
Should leave our blessings ever unimproved,
And prodigally wander from the hearths
Where smiling Peace sits aye a welcome guest,
And Plenty fills us with her bounteous store,
To spend our patrimonial share of joy,
Of time and thought upon a heartless world,
Till lost in dark Eternity's wide sea!
O Torrent! art thou not akin to Time,
Or rather his impersonated form,
That flees our grasp clothed in the brightest robes
Of love and hope that once our garments were?
How deaf to every voice of streams art thou,
Made thus by thine own ever-sounding tongue!
How heedless Time to every plaint of man!
How full of mockery to his heart of grief!
How swift his current bears us down, to roll
In the deep surgings of Life's ocean-wave,
Vainly to struggle back again to youth!
Over his rocks and down his deep abyss,
He flings the dearest treasures of our hearts;
Alas! how bruised and shattered on they sweep,
In his swift whirlpool unrecovered all!
Aye! when the currents of his years rush by,
And lay their fingers on our hopeful barks,
What well-nerved soul, what vigorous arm of thought,
What oar of feeling or what sail of joy,
Can help us stem his tide or shun his depths?
Oh! they must shoot unaided o'er his verge,
And sink for aye in his oblivious flood!
Yes, tearful Mourner! thou dost often sound
The funeral wail of numbers who have rushed
In dark fatality adown thy stream!
See yonder chieftain, long the forest's pride,
Whose bow is death, whose arrow poison-fraught,
Whose arm is terror and whose eye is light;
In the close wigwam, framed of birchen bark,
His other self sings to their hearts' young hope
Of his return, while smiles like starlight soft
On quiet streams, play round its sleeping lips,
As if the infant dreamed of his embrace;
While sounds of steps, like pattering rain on leaves,
Fall on the mother's ear, of those upborne
Upon her breast from infancy, now blest
With youth's green hopes and fresh life's sunny skies;
Voices, like plashings from some home-bound bark,
Whose swift keel cleaves the wave, at evening heard,
Echo within her heart, a heart that leaps
With kindling hope at every heavy step,
That she may rush into her chieftain's arms.
But ah! lone mother, never more wilt thou
Feel the warm pressure of that bosom's love,
Nor hold thy dear ones up in whom to show
His image pictured and thy heart within.
Alas! fond wife, not e'er again thou❜lt tell
Of all the hopes and fears in silent hours,
That thronged thy bosom for thine absent love.
Nor wilt thou pillow up his head o'ercome
With keen fatigue, nor gently fan his sleep,
Nor crush the maize, nor bring the spring's cool draught,
The power of hunger and of thirst to quell.
Where roams that chieftain now, O loving one?
Through deep and tangled wild-woods, far away,
Close to the fall of light, he treads the leaves
That clothe his path where lies the wild deer's track.
Ha! there his quick eye meets a noble stag!
His arm is nerved, his hide-strung bow is raised,
His arrow pointed,-now like light it flies!
Deep in that side quivers the feathered shaft,
Reddened all o'er with jets of crimson life.
Away! the antlered king the forest flees,
And in the cooling stream a refuge seeks;
Quickly the hunter speeds, and on the bank
Finds soon a light canoe, that parts the tide
As the swift arrow cuts the yielding air;
Lightly it dances like a gossamer
Along the stream, and nears the panting deer,
That sees his fate at hand, and turning, sheds
The dying tear, then breathes his life away!
But ho! what paleness, like the dawn's dull gray,
Veils now that face, what new light fires that eye,
What nerves that arm to ply thus swift his oar?
Ah! in the eager chase he heeded not
The eddying tide, that swept yon ledge of rocks!
And now within its grasp his frail bark moves
On to thy verge, O Cataract of wo!
Nobly he struggles, but alas, in vain,
To stem the fatal current and escape!
Hark! one wild shriek shoots through the frightened air,
Startling the nestled birds from sunset sleep,
Waking the hills to give back their response!
All, all is o'er, for in that shriek is told
That life is hovering o'er th' abyss of death!
He drops his oar, he folds his weary arms,
And in his bark erect, unmoved and calm,
Awaits his doom with bold heroic heart!
He hears that voice terrific, like the roar
Of hungry wild beasts in their desert lair,
Prepared to plunge upon their victims nigh!
He sees yon spot where angry billows fight
In rival power t' embrace the glassy tide.
Few moments now remain, and like the swan
That sings at death its ebbing life away,
He swells the hymn of Nature, now so sad,
With the calm music of his heart's death-song:
"Farewell! ye loved ones, that to this strong heart
Were like its acorns to th' unblighted oak;
Soon, soon all riven by the lightning play
Of these resistless tides, my frame shall fall,
And with their thunder voice my death-groans blend!
Oh! in this land whereon the sunlight gleams,
No more your eyes shall join with mine their rays,
But in the land where spirits are all light,
Shall life renewed bring pleasures unalloyed,
At whose deep fountain all of us may drink.
Farewell! thou heart that blent its hopes with mine,
Like day-beams glistening in the depth of tides, ⚫
The riving storm rends now this towering trunk,
And casts it splintered on the sharpened rock,
While thou, O loved one, with thine arms untwined,
Must fall to earth in unsupported grief.
Farewell! in yonder clime where pain lives not,
Nor fatal cataracts leap down with death,
I wait for thee till thou shalt end Life's chase!
Farewell my wigwam! I no more shall see
Thy fire-light gleaming at the evening's close!
Farewell my warrior band! whose stalwart arms
Have won with me the conquest of our foes;
By council-fires we never more shall meet,
And talk of battles to be fought and won;
No more on fields of carnage shall we brave
Stern visages of men that love war's din.
Yet, brothers, shall we gather in the halls
Of that Great Spirit whom we all adore,
And join the councils of departed braves.
Farewell ye streams! whose arrowy currents bore
My swift canoe on like a bird of light,
Safe to my home where hope embosomed smiled;
Your tides here mingled bear me far away
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