University of Virginia Library

Where the highway winds down a hill,
Beside a sparkling woodland rill,
In the mild winter thirty-three,
A wigwam stood beneath a tree,
A lordly oak, whose branches gray,
Hung o'er the passing traveler's way,
Until the woodman's echoing stroke
The silence of the forest broke,
And felled to earth the giant oak.
Within that wigwam snug and warm,
Close sheltered from the winter storm,
Dwelt a proud chieftain of the band
That erst possessed this lovely land.
Maumese his name, and, by his side
A forest girl his stay and pride,
A gentle princess of the wood
Whose form and air betrayed her blood.
'Twas there a settler's roving son,
A blooming youth scarce twenty-one,
Sought for and found the Chieftain's daughter,
In her lone home by Bureau's water.
Bashful at first the lovers sat
Within a wigwam on a mat,
But soon found out with little pother,
A way to understand each other;
For love's soft language in rehearsal,
The poet's say is universal.
Maumese had gone with day's first beam,
To hunt the deer along the stream,
Nor yet returned, though to his rest
The sun was sinking in the west,
Which left the damsel quite at ease
To study arts her beau to please.
Her youthful suitor to beguile
She wore her sweetest, gentlest smile;
Plaited with nice assiduous care,
Each flowing tress of jetty hair;
Bound with a ribbon gay her waist,
To make it more in English taste;
Arranged her beads and silver rings,
Bracelets, and various trivial things,
Which add such charms to beauty's face,
And heighten every female grace;
Around her dusky shoulders drew,
A cotton scarf of azure hue;
And thus in all her pride arrayed,
The white man wooed the Indian maid.
Stately was she in form and mien,
Fit pattern for a forrest queen;
Her step was lighter than the fawn's
That bounded o'er those blooming lawns.
Her dark eye shed a pensive ray,
Soft as the violets of May
That smiled amid the solitudes
Of these her native plains and woods.
On passed the days, 'till wore away
The winter months, and bright and gay
In the soft airs of April sprung
The wood-flowers, and the wild birds sung
Amid the boughs that waived above
That home of happiness and love.
For, while the wintry season flew,
Acquaintance into friendship grew;
Friendship to love, until, at last,
The golden links seemed strong and fast;
When without notice to the lovers,
Maumese the wigwam roof uncovers,
Unloosed his ponies from their stakes,
And started for the northern lakes,
To meet his brother chiefs and sires
Around the Nation's council fires.
Ah! who can tell what pangs of grief,
Pierced the young daughter of the chief?
How streamed with tears those beaming eyes,
How her dark bosom heaved with sighs,
When thus at one relentless stroke,
The golden chain of love was broke.
And as her pony climbed the hill,
She gazed behind, and listened still,
If haply she again might see
Her lover's form beneath a tree,
Or hear him sing, so sweet to her,
The Indian Philosopher.
But e'er the nightfall closed the day,
Long miles of rugged distance lay
Between the lovers—parted, never
To meet again on earth forever!
When the sun rose to noon's full height,
And filled the wood with warmth and light,
Our lover sauntering through the grove,
Sought the lone dwelling of his love.
As midst her marble piles o'erthrown
Old exiled Marius sat alone,
And wept the sad and mournful fate
Of Carthage, fallen and desolate;
Even so our hero, when he stood
By that lone wigwam of the wood,—
No sound of human footstep there,
Its bare poles quivering to the air,
Its hearth's cold ashes slaked and strown,
The maid he loved far distant gone,
O'er blasted hopes with bleeding heart,
Wept with a keener, bitterer smart.
Deride him not ye scornful girls,
With blooming cheeks and flaxen curls,
Those tears were honorably shed
As Anthony's o'er Cæsar dead.
And know like anguish and despair
Your hearts may yet be doomed to bear.
As bends the sapling to the blast,
Yet stands erect when storms are past;
Sometimes the human soul, bowed low
By disappointment's cruel blow,
By firm resolve casts off the pain,
And stands erect and healed again.
Not so our pale-faced youth. Love's dart
Had pierced too deep his wounded heart;
And in his struggle for relief,
To dissipate the inward grief,
That plagued him more than gout or phthisic,
Resolved to learn the art of physic,
And delve within that mine of thought,
'Till his keen anguish was forgot.
What trifles change the course of life
From scenes of love to toil and strife!
And eke from scenes of toil and pain,
To scenes of love and peace again.
So the frail leaves of Autumn, shed
Upon the streamlets sandy bed,
Resist the struggling currents force,
Obstruct its way, and change its course.
Had not the fates thus stepped between
Our hero and the forest queen,
Until the work by love begun,
Had melted both hearts into one,
What different course their lives had run.
Perhaps our lover might have stood
Among the chieftains of the wood,
And ruled as the superior mind
Rules in the councils of its kind;
Or else had led the dusky maid,
Timid, and shrinking and afraid,
Where fashions votaries held the sway,
In towns and cities far away.
Or, haply, they had built their home
By some lone stream where violets bloom,
And reared beside the quiet waters,
A stately group of sons and daughters;
Sons, in whose form and martial mien,
The chieftain grandsire might be seen.
Some Randolph, with eccentric mind,
Keen, shrewd, sarcastic and refined;
And buxom girls, with flaxen hair,
And cheeks of dusky shadow, where
The Saxon blood came mantling through,
And eyes of heaven's serenest blue.
But fancy wearies in the chase
Of things that might have taken place,
Had not the fates thus snapped the chain,
By Cupid forged to bind the twain.