Excerpt
CANTO I.PRIMEVAL DAYS.
Hear a song of ancient story,
Of a city on a hillside,
Of the valleys all about it,
Of the forest and the wildwood,
Of the deer that stalked within it,
And the birds that flew above it,
And the wolves and bears around it,
Sole possessors and retainers
Of the silent territory.
Hear the song of its high mountains
Of its gushing rills and streamlets,
Of its leaping, rolling rivers,
Of the meadows still and lonely,
Of the groves all solitary,
Of the land of cunning fables.
Should you ask me of this city,
With its legends and its stories,
[2]With its tales of peace and plenty,
With its tales of Indian warfare,
With its nights and days of watching,
With the camp-fires all a-gleaming,
And the white man’s deadly peril,
I should answer, I should tell you,
’Tis the city of Lancaster,
In the county we call Garrard,
In the State of old Kentucky,
In America, the nation
On the continent Northwestern,
Found by Christopher Columbus.
Once a tangled, gloomy woodland,
With the music of its rivers,
As they wound along the grasses,
With the singing of its birdlings,
As they flew among the maples,
With the hissing of its reptiles,
Crawling o’er the sylvan meadows,
With the growling of its wild beasts,
Lurking in the dells and caverns.
Angels gazed with pleasure on it,
On this Eden habitation,
On this work so calm and lovely;
On the moonlit, velvet carpet,
Where the fairies held their revels,
On the broad expanse of verdure,
With the sunbeams slanting o’er it,
[3]On the rugged mountain eyrie,
Where the eagle reared her nestlings,
On the tiny brooks that trickled
Down the glens so cool and shaded.
Green and fresh the ferns and mosses,
Clinging close to rock and crevice,
Pure and bright the silver waters,
Dancing o’er the shelving limestone.
Angels saw and angels praised it,
For the gracious Spirit made it,
“Very good” the Spirit called it.
Happy valley! Peaceful shadows!
Glorious sunlight of an epoch,
Which the latter days can know not!
For the stride of man’s progression
Desecrates these pristine beauties,
Bends these gorgeous land-scape beauties,
To his purposes of profit.
And the cycle brought its changes,
As the moons were waxing, waning.
The still tract of virgin woodland,
Was invaded by the demon
That the sweet primeval ages
Soon were destined to encounter,
The remorseless Indian demon,
The bold red man of the forest.
Then the wigwam and the peace-pipe
[4]Sent aloft the smoke of welcome,
Welcome to the roving brothers,
To the tribes that wandered restless,
To the sachem and the chieftain,
To the warrior and the maiden.
I have said the tribes invaded
The sweet haunts of Nature’s children,
Of her birds and beasts and reptiles,
Of her rivers, rills, and streamlets;
Of her trees and flowers and grasses,
Yet the song of peace continued.
Peaceful still, yet no more silent;
For where man, with human passion,
Dwells in all this wide creation,
Strife is ever slumb’ring, waiting,
Waiting for the magic touchstone,
For the trouble he is born to,
“Trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
So there rose a reign of terror,
Of dismay and cruel bloodshed,
When the white man came among them,
The all-potent, dreaded pale-face,
He, another bold invader,
An usurper of the woodland....