And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance with Mogg."
His eyes are fixed-but his lips draw in
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish grin,-
And he sinks again, like a senseless log.
Ruth does not speak-she does not stir;
But she gazes down on the murderer,
Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell,
Too much for her ear, of that deed of hell.
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red,
And the dark fingers clenching the bear-skin bed '
What thoughts of horror and madness whirl
Through the burning brain of that fallen girl!
John Bonython lifts his gun to his eye,
Its muzzle is close to the Indian's ear
But he drops it again. "Some one may be nigh,
And I would not that even the wolves should hear."
He draws his knife from its deer-skin belt-
Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt ;—
Kneeling down on one knee, by the Indian's side,
From his throat he opens the blanket wide;
And twice or thrice he feebly essays
A trembling hand with the knife to raise.
"I cannot ❞—he mutters-" did he not save My life from a cold and wintry grave,
When the storm came down from Agioochook,
And the north-wind howled, and the tree-tops
shook-
And I strove, in the drifts of the rushing snow,
Till my knees grew weak and I could not go,
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep,
And my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses sleep!
I cannot strike him-Ruth Bonython !
In the devil's name, tell me what's to be done?
Oh! when the soul, once pure and high,
Is stricken down from Virtue's sky,
As, with the downcast star of morn,
Some gems of light are with it drawn-
And, through its night of darkness, play
Some tokens of its primal day-
Some lofty feelings linger still-
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet
Whatever threatens with defeat
Its all-indomitable will!
But lacks the mean of mind and heart,
Though eager for the gains of crime,
Oft, at his chosen place and time,
The strength to bear his evil part;
And, shielded by his very Vice,
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice.
Ruth starts erect-with bloodshot eye,
And lips drawn tight across her teeth,
Showing their locked embrace beneath,
In the red fire-light :-" Mogg must die!
Give me the knife!"-The outlaw turns,
Shuddering in heart and limb, away—
But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns,
And he sees on the wall strange shadows play, A lifted arm, a tremulous blade,
Are dimly pictured in light and shade,
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, that cry Again and again—he sees it fall—
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall!
He hears quick footsteps-a shape flits by
The door on its rusted hinges creaks :—
"Ruth-daughter Ruth!" the outlaw shrieks
But no sound comes back-he is standing alone
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone!
Tis morning over Norridgewock—
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock.
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred
At intervals by breeze and bird,
And wearing all the hues which glow
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow,
That glorious picture of the air,
Which summer's light-robed angel forms
On the dark ground of fading storms,
With pencil dipped in sunbeams there-
And, stretching out, on either hand,
O'er all that wide and unshorn land,
Till, weary of its gorgeousness,
The aching and the dazzled eye
Rests gladdened, on the calm blue sky—
Slumbers the mighty wilderness!
The oak, upon the windy hill,
Its dark green burthen upward heaves—
The hemlock broods above its rill,
Its cone-like foliage darker still,
Against the birch's graceful stem,
And the rough walnut bough receives
The sun upon its crowded leaves,
Each colored like a topaz gem;
And the tall maple wears with them
The coronal which autumn gives,
The brief, bright sign of ruin near,
The hectic of a dying year!
The hermit priest, who lingers now
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow,
The gray and thunder-smitten pile
Which marks afar the Desert Isle,20
While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with his slumbers come,--
The tranquil skies of sunny France,
The peasant's harvest song and dance,
The vines around the hill-sides wreathing
The soft airs midst their clusters breathing,
The wings which dipped, the stars which shone
Within thy bosom, blue Garronne!
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall,
At morning spring and even-fall,
Sweet voices in the still air singing-
The chant of many a holy hymn-
The solemn bell of vespers ringing--
And hallowed torch-light falling dim
On pictured saint and seraphim!
For here beneath him lies unrolled,
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold,
A vision gorgeous as the dream
Of the beatified may seem,
When, as his Church's legends say,
Borne upward in ecstatic bliss,
The rapt enthusiast soars away
Unto a brighter world than this:
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale-
A moment's lifting of the veil !
Far eastward o'er the lovely bay,
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay;
And gently from that Indian town
The verdant hill-side slopes adown,
To where the sparkling waters play
Upon the yellow sands below;
And shooting round the winding shores
Of narrow capes, and isles which lie
Slumbering to ocean's lullaby-
With birchen boat and glancing oars,
The red men to their fishing go;
While from their planting ground is borne
The treasure of the golden corn,
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow
Wild through the locks which o'er them flow.
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done,
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun,
Watching the huskers, with a smile
For each full ear which swells the pile;
And the old chief, who never more
May bend the bow or pull the oar,
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door,
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone,
The arrow-head from flint and bone.
Beneath the westward turning eye
A thousand wooded islands lie-
Gems of the waters !-with each hue
Of brightness set in ocean's blue.
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees
Touched by the pencil of the frost,
And, with the motion of each breeze,
A moment seen-a moment lost-
Changing and blent, confused and tossed,
The brighter with the darker crossed,
Their thousand tints of beauty glow
Down in the restless waves below,
And tremble in the sunny skies,
As if, from waving bough to bough,
Flitted the birds of paradise.
There sleep Placentia's group-and there
Pere Breteaux marks the hour of prayer;
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff,
On which the Father's hut is seen,
The Indian stays his rocking skiff,
And peers the hemlock boughs between,
Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book.21
There, gloomily against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air-
Seen from afar, like some strong hold
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