The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

The man who wanders far with death
And peers within the ghostly gate
Hath many wondrous facts to state
If ever God restores his breath;
And who can marvel that the wight
Who plunged beneath Niagara's glooms,
Believed his spirit winged its flight
Afar within the realm of tombs?

Like favored souls of Grecian days
When Gods delivered pythian lays,
While yet the spirit-world was near,
And man was there and then was here,
Our hero passed the Stygian bounds
And saw the Happy Hunting Grounds;
Yea, many a famed and queenly squaw,
And many a valiant sachem, saw
Who drew the shaft against the ball
In vain, but fell as freemen fall.

There, crowned with plumes of eagle-wing,
Supreme amidst a glorious ring
Of braves, appeared the dreadful chief
Who bowed New England's head in grief,
And whirled her villages in flame,
And wrote in blood King Philip's name;

Unfading wrote it on the roll
Of those heroic sons of dole
Who strike for hearth and native land
With heavy heart but heavier hand,
And perish striking, yet live on
As though they fell at Marathon.

The sachem cast an angry stare
Upon the stranger's pallid face,
As all amazed that even there
Should come a man of English race;
Then sternly bent his mighty bow
And drew an arrow to the head
So swiftly that the shaft was red
Before the victim guessed the blow.
The paleface felt a madding pain;
He raised a feeble arm to strive;
He hoped he might be still alive,
Yet knew the weapon in his brain;
And then he felt his body hurled
By hands of superhuman might
Through surging atmospheres of night
Beyond the red-man's spirit-world.

No marvel Downing wrote with pen
In later days, that underneath
Niagara's tremendous seethe,
Endures the heaven of Indian men;
And there the awful sagamore
Awaits in arms a promised day
When he may hasten forth to slay,
And win his forest realm once more.