PART I.

WHO stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone,

Unmoving and tall in the light of the sky,

Where the spray of the cataract sparkles on high,

Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone ?1

Close to the verge of the rock is he, While beneath him the Saco its work is doing,

Hurrying down to its grave, the sea, And slow through the rock its pathway hewing!

Far down, through the mist of the falling river,

Which rises up like an incense ever, The splintered points of the crags are

seen,

With water howling and vexed between, While the scooping whirl of the pool beneath

Seems an open throat, with its granite teeth!

But Mogg Megone never trembled yet
Wherever his eye or his foot was set.
He is watchful: each form in the moon-
light dim,

Of rock or of tree, is seen of him :

Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin

wet,

And the roar of their rushing, he hears it not.

The moonlight, through the open bough Of the guarl'd beech, whose naked

root

Coils like a serpent at his foot, Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow. His head is bare, save only where Waves in the wind one lock of hair, Reserved for him, whoe'er he be, More mighty than Megone in strife, When breast to breast and knee to knee,

Above the fallen warrior's life Gleams, quick and keen, the scalpingknife.

Megone hath his knife and hatchet and gun,

And his gaudy and tasselled blanket

on :

His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid, And magic words on its polished blade, 'T was the gift of Castine 2 to Mogg Me

gone,

For a scalp or twain from the Yengees

torn:

His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine, And Modocawando's wives had strung