A footstep is it the step of Cleaves, With Indian blood on his English sword? Steals Harmon 5 down from the sands of York, With hand of iron and foot of cork? Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile, For vengeance left his vine-hung isle ?6 Hark! at that whistle, soft and low, How lights the eye of Mogg Megone! A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow, "Boon welcome, Johnny Bonython!" Out steps, with cautious foot and slow, And quick, keen glances to and fro, The hunted outlaw, Bonython ! 7 A low, lean, swarthy man is he, With blanket-garb and buskined knee, And naught of English fashion on; For he hates the race from whence he MOGG MEGONE. Cautious and slow, with pauses oft, Hark! is that the angry howl On his leafy cradle swung?- Indistinct, in shadow, seeming Like some old and pillared shrine; With the soft and white moonshine, Round the foliage-tracery shed Of each column's branching head, For its lamps of worship gleaming! And the sounds awakened there, In the pine-leaves fine and small, Soft and sweetly musical, By the fingers of the air, For the anthem's dying fall Lingering round some temple's wall! Niche and cornice round and round Wailing like the ghost of sound! Is not Nature's worship thus, Ceaseless ever, going on? Hath it not a voice for us In the thunder, or the tone Naught had the twain of thoughts like these As they wound along through the crowded trees, Where never had rung the axeman's stroke On the gnarled trunk of the roughbarked oak; Climbing the dead tree's mossy log, Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine, Turning aside the wild grape vine, And lightly crossing the quaking bog Whose surface shakes at the leap of the frog, And out of whose pools the ghostly fog Creeps into the chill moonshine! 9 5 Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard Look! feeling melts that frozen glance, It moves that marble countenance, The pleased ear of the forest-child, - O, woman wronged, can cherish hate More deep and dark than manhood may; Go, Mogg is wise: he will keep his land, And Sagamore John, when he feels with his hand, Shall miss his scalp where it grew before." The moment's gust of grief is gone, The lip is clenched, the tears are still, God pity thee, Ruth Bonython! MOGG MEGONE. Are nature's feelings in thy breast, -the eye The bosom heaves, Which over that still working brow With one strong effort crushing down The savage murderer's sullen gaze, And scarcely look or tone betrays How the heart strives beneath its chain. "Is the Sachem angry,- angry with Ruth, Because she cries with an ache in her tooth,10 Which would make a Sagamore jump and cry, And look about with a woman's eye? No, Ruth will sit in the Sachem's door And braid the mats for his wigwam floor, And broil his fish and tender fawn, And weave his wampum, and grind his 7 The sum of Indian happiness!~ A wigwam, where the warm sunshine Looks in among the groves of pine, A stream, where, round thy light canoe, The trout and salmon dart in view, And the fair girl, before thee now, Spreading thy mat with hand of snow, Or plying, in the dews of morn, Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn, Or offering up, at eve, to thee, Thy birchen dish of hominy! From the rude board of Bonython, With head averted, yet ready ear, Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls, And over its inmates three. From Sagamore Bonython's hunting flask The fire-water burns at the lip of Me low, He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, His head falls down on his naked breast, He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest. "Humph-drunk as a beast!" - and Bonython's brow Isdarker than ever with evil thought"The fool has signed his warrant; but how And when shall the deed be wrought? Speak, Ruth! why, what the devil is there, To fix thy gaze in that empty air? — Speak, Ruth! by my soul, if I thought that tear, Which shames thyself and our purpose here, Were shed for that cursed and pale faced dog, Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of Mogg, And whose beastly soul is in Satan's keeping, This this!"-he dashes his hand upon The rattling stock of his loaded gun,"Should send thee with him to do thy weeping!" "Father!"— the eye of Bonython Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone, Hollow and deep, as it were spoken By the unmoving tongue of death, Or from some statue's lips had broken, A sound without a breath! stir: But she gazes down on the murderer, |