The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its golden leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light

Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, Around a far uplifted cone,

In the warm blush of evening shone;

An image of the silver lakes,

By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain ;
Line 2. At sunset, in its brazen leaves.

Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose, and, on the dead man's plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.

L'ENVOI.

This poem was written in the autumn of 1839 and served as a poetical summary of the volume Voices of the Night, which it closed, referring in its three parts to the three divisions of that volume. See Introductory Note and also head-note to Earlier Poems.

YE voices, that arose

After the Evening's close,

And whispered to my restless heart repose!

Go, breathe it in the ear

Of all who doubt and fear,

And say to them, "Be of good cheer!"

Ye sounds, so low and calm,

That in the groves of balm

Seemed to me like an angel's psalm!

Go, mingle yet once more

With the perpetual roar

Of the pine forest, dark and hoar!

Tongues of the dead, not lost,
But speaking from death's frost,
Like fiery tongues at Pentecost!

Glimmer, as funeral lamps,
Amid the chills and damps

Of the vast plain where Death encamps!

BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Two years after the appearance of Voices of the Night, Mr. Longfellow published a second volume of poems with the title Ballads and other Poems. It was issued December 19, 1841, and contained all the verse which he had written in the interval with the important exception of The Spanish Student. Besides the pieces included in this division in the present edition, the original volume contained two ballads translated from the German, and also The Children of the Lord's Supper from the Swedish of Bishop Tegnér, which will be found in the sixth volume of this series. It is to be noted that his intention at one time was to omit Tegnér's poem, and to print a thin volume mainly as a sort of herald to The Spanish Student, which he looked upon as an important venture. "I have two or three literary projects," he writes to Mr. Samuel Ward, September 17, 1841; "foremost among which are the Student and the Skeleton. I have been thinking this morning which I shall bring out first. The Skeleton, with the few other pieces I have on hand, will, it is true, make but a meagre volume. But what then? It is important to bring all my guns to bear now; and though they are small ones, the shot may take effect. Through the breach