I told you that Almighty power Look at the chrysalis, my love,- Now raise your wondering glance above, To where yon insect flies!" "O, yes, mamma! how very gay Its wings of starry gold! And see! it lightly flies away Beyond my gentle hold. O, mother, now I know full well, On golden wings to range, How beautiful will brother be, When God shall give him wings, Above this dying world to flee, And live with heavenly things!" ALONZO LEWIS. DEATH SONG. GREAT Sassacus fled from the eastern shores, His sannaps were slain by their thunder's power, His ancestor once was our countryman's foe, But the foe never came to the Mohawk's tent, But sing ye the Death Song, and kindle the pine, And bid its broad light like his valor to shine; Then raise high his pile by our warriors' heaps, And tell to his tribe that his murderer sleeps. THE WANDERER OF AFRICA. HE launch'd his boat where the dark waves flow, He had sat in the cool of the palm's broad shade, And the dark maids of Sego their mats had spread, He was weary and faint in a stranger clime, And the look of his mother was gentle and sweet, And this was the song which the dark maids sung, And the stranger went forth when the night-breeze had died, And launch'd his light bark on the Joliba's tide; And he waved his white kerchief to those dark maids, As he silently enter'd the palmy shades. And the maidens of Sego were sad and lone, And sung their rude song, like the death spirit's moan: "The stranger has gone where the simoom will burn, Alas! for the white man will never return!" FLY on, nor touch thy wing, bright bird, Too near our shaded earth, Or the warbling, now so sweetly heard, May lose its note of mirth. Fly on, nor seek a place of rest In the home of "care-worn things:" To dip them where the waters glide The fields of upper air are thine, Thy place where stars shine free; I would thy home, bright one, were mine, Above life's stormy sea. "A bird peculiar to the East. It is supposed to fly constantly in the air, and never touch the ground." |