Or did those fairy hopes of future bliss,

Which simple Nature to your bosoms gave, Find other worlds, with fairer skies than this, Beyond the gloomy portals of the grave,

In whose bright climes the virtuous and the brave Rest from their toils, and all their cares dismiss ?

Where the great hunter stills pursues the chase,
And, o'er the sunny mountains, tracks the deer;
Or where he finds each long-extinguished race,
And sees, once more, the mighty mammoth rear
The giant form which lies embedded here,
Of other years the sole remaining trace.

Or, it may be, that still ye linger near

The sleeping ashes, once your dearest pride;
And, could your forms to mortal eye appear,
Or the dark veil of death be thrown aside,
Then might I see your restless shadows glide,
With watchful care, around these relics dear.

If so, forgive the rude, unhallowed feet

Which trod so thoughtless o'er your mighty dead.
I would not thus profane their lone retreat,

Nor trample where the sleeping warrior's head
Lay pillowed on his everlasting bed,

Age after age, still sunk in slumbers sweet.

Farewell! and may you still in peace repose;
Still o'er you may the flowers, untrodden, bloom,
And softly wave to every breeze that blows,

Casting their fragrance on each lonely tomb,

In which your tribes sleep in earth's common womb, And mingle with the clay from which they rose.

Burial of the Minnisink.-LONGFELLOW.

ON sunny slope and beechen swell
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And when the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its golden leaves.

Far upward, in the mellow light,

Rose the blue hills-one cloud of white;
Around, a far uplifted cone

In the warm blush of evening shone-
An image of the silver lakes

By which the Indian soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard,
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart and strong in hand
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sung, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds, the weapons made
For the hard toils of war were laid;
The cuirass woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle steed;

And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart :-One piercing neigh
Arose-and on the dead man's plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.*

To the Eagle. PERCIVAL.

From the Atlantic Souvenir for 1827.

BIRD of the broad and sweeping wing,
Thy home is high in heaven,

Where wide the storms their banners fling,
And the tempest clouds are driven.
Thy throne is on the mountain top;
Thy fields, the boundless air;
And hoary peaks, that proudly prop
The skies, thy dwellings are.

Thou sittest like a thing of light,
Amid the noontide blaze:
The midway sun is clear and bright;
It cannot dim thy gaze.

Thy pinions, to the rushing blast,

O'er the bursting billow, spread,

Where the vessel plunges, hurry past,

Like an angel of the dead.

Thou art perched aloft on the beetling crag,
And the waves are white below,

And on, with a haste that cannot lag,
They rush in an endless flow.

Again thou hast plumed thy wing for flight

To lands beyond the sea,

And away, like a spirit wreathed in light,
Thou hurriest, wild and free.

Thou hurriest over the myriad waves,
And thou leavest them all behind;
Thou sweepest that place of unknown graves,
Fleet as the tempest wind.

* Alluding to an Indian superstition.

When the night storm gathers dim and dark,
With a shrill and boding scream,

Thou rushest by the foundering bark,

Quick as a passing dream.

Lord of the boundless realm of air,

In thy imperial name,

The hearts of the bold and ardent dare
The dangerous path of fame.

Beneath the shade of thy golden wings,
The Roman legions bore,

From the river of Egypt's cloudy springs,
Their pride, to the polar shore.

For thee they fought, for thee they fell,
And their oath was on thee laid;
To thee the clarions raised their swell,
And the dying warrior prayed.

Thou wert, through an age of death and fears,
The image of pride and power,

Till the gathered rage of a thousand years
Burst forth in one awful hour.

And then a deluge of wrath it came,

And the nations shook with dread;

And it swept the earth till its fields were flame,
And piled with the mingled dead.
Kings were rolled in the wasteful flood,
With the low and crouching slave;
And together lay, in a shroud of blood,
The coward and the brave.

And where was then thy fearless flight?
"O'er the dark, mysterious sea,

To the lands that caught the setting light,
The cradle of Liberty.

There, on the silent and lonely shore,

For ages, I watched alone,

And the world, in its darkness, asked no more

Where the glorious bird had flown.

But then came a bold and hardy few,
And they breasted the unknown wave;

I caught afar the wandering crew;
And I knew they were high and brave.

I wheeled around the welcome bark,

As it sought the desolate shore,
And up to heaven, like a joyous lark,
My quivering pinions bore.

And now that bold and hardy few
Are a nation wide and strong;

And danger and doubt I have led them through,
And they worship me in song;

And over their bright and glancing arms,

On field, and lake, and sea,

With an eye that fires, and a spell that charms, I guide them to victory."

Salmon River.*-BRAINARD.

'Tis a sweet stream; and so, 'tis true, are all That, undisturbed, save by the harmless brawl Of mimic rapid or slight waterfall,

Pursue their way

By mossy bank, and darkly waving wood,
By rock, that, since the deluge, fixed has stood,
Showing to sun and moon their crisping flood
By night and day.

But yet there's something in its humble rank,
Something in its pure wave and sloping bank,
Where the deer sported, and the young fawn drank
With unscared look;

There's much in its wild history, that teems
With all that's superstitious, and that seems
To match our fancy and eke out our dreams,
In that small brook.

Havoc has been upon its peaceful plain,

And blood has dropped there, like the drops of rain; The corn grows o'er the still graves of the slain; And many a quiver,

Filled from the reeds that grew on yonder hill,

*This river enters into the Connecticut at East Haddam.