He laughs at his jest. Hush — - what is there?

The sleeping Indian is striving to rise, With his knife in his hand, and glaring eyes!

"Wagh!-Mogg will have the paleface's hair,

For his knife is sharp, and his fingers can help

The hair to pull and the skin to peel, -Let him cry like a woman and twist like an eel,

The great Captain Scamman must lose his scalp!

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, -sne does not

stir:

1 But she gazes down on the raurderer,

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 eve kests gladdened, on the caìm 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, 13
While gazing on the scene below,
May half forget the dreams of home,
That nightly with his slumbers

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, -ard there

Père Breteaux marks the hour of praver 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 be

tween,

Half trembling, as he seeks to look
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book.14
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 stronghold
Built by the ocean kings of old;
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and
thin,

Swells in the north vast Katahdin :
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet

And mingle with his own bright bay. Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,

Arched over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.

Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,

And with their falling timbers block Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! Gazes the white man on the wreck

Ofthe down-trodden Norridgewock,-. In one lone village hemmed at length, In battle shorn of half their strength, Turned, like the panther in his lair,

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, For one last struggle of despair,

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet! Unreaped, upon the planting lands, The scant, neglected harvest stands : No shout is there, -no dance, -no song:

The aspect of the very child
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild

Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk;
And plucks his father's knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,

The scalping of an English foe: Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile, Burns, like a snake's, his small eye,

while

Some bough or sapling meets his blow. The fisher, as he drops his line,

"O father, bear with me; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.
Bear with me while I speak,

but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while, —
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile;
For half I fancy I can see

My mother's sainted look in thee.

"My dear lost mother! sad and pale, Mournfully sinking day by day, And with a hold on life as frail

As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray, Hang feebly on their parent spray, And tremble in the gale;

Yet watching o'er my childishness
With patient fondness, not the less
For all the agony which kept
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept;
And checking every tear and groan
That haply might have waked my own,
And bearing still, without offence,
My idle words, and petulance;
Reproving with a tear, and, while
The tooth of pain was keenly preying
Upon her very heart, repaying

My brief repentance with a smile.
"O. in her meek, forgiving eye
There was a brightness not of mirth,
A light whose c'ear intensity
Was borrowed not of earth.

Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,
Unwarning of the grave.

'T was like the hue which Autumn gives
To yonder changed and dying leaves,
Breathed over by his frosty breath;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!

"Sweet were the tales she used to tel

When summer's eve was dear to us And, fading from the darkening dell, The glory of the sunset fell

On wooded Agamenticus, When, sitting by our cottage wall, The murmur of the Saco's fall,

And the south-wind's expiring sighs Came, softly blending, on my ear, With the low tones I loved to hear: Tales of the pure, the good, — the wise,

The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told ;-

Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's foun tains,

Amid her father's thirsty flock, Beautiful to her kinsman seeming As the bright angels of his dreaming, On Padan-aran's holy rock; Of gentle Ruth, and her who kept Her awful vigil on the mountains, By Israel's virgin daughters wept ;. Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing The song for grateful Israel meet, While every crimson wave was bringing The spoils of Egypt at her feet; Of her, -Samaria's humble daughter, Who paused to hear, beside her well, Lessons of love and truth, which fell Softly as Shiloh's flowing water;

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, The Promised One, so long foretold By holy seer and bard of old,

Revealed before her wondering eyes "Slowly she faded. Day by day Her step grew weaker in our hall, And fainter, at each even-fall,

Her sad voice died away.
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation's holy smile: