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 | The vision of Cortes, Cain, and other poems |  |
14
VII.
He bows, but makes him no reply,Then o'er the heads of those surrounding,
His slight made jennet seems to fly,
Like deer o'er western prairies bounding,
When, sudden from the forest's gloom,
Upon the broad savannah's breaking,
Compell'd by inauspicious doom,
The traveller seeks a kinder home,
The one, so loved in youth, forsaking.
Amid her enemies she springs,
Then sudden, as impell'd by wings,
Convulsed by the fatal knife,
She leaps, and leaping, spends her life.
One glance the chieftain gives, and sees
The boy as free as southern breeze,
Unnoted, in the greater prize,
Within their grasp, before their eyes!
And, if perchance, his foemen by,
Beheld a tear drop fill his eye,
'Twere less at this assurance known,
Than, that his followers were his own!
Compell'd, as well as he, to make
A triumph of the very stake.
| The vision of Cortes, Cain, and other poems | |