Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/265
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The Indian's Bride.
Why is that graceful female here
With yon red hunter of the deer?
Of gentle mien and shape, she seems
For civil halls designed,
Yet with the stately savage walks,
As she were of his kind.
Look on her leafy diadem,
Enriched with many a floral gem;
Those simple ornaments about
Her candid brow, disclose
The loitering springs last violet.
And summer's earliest rose;
But not a flower lies breathing there
Sweet as herself, or half so fair.
Exchanging lustre with the sun,
A part of day she strays,
A glancing, living, human smile
On Nature's face she plays.
Can none instruct me what are these
Companions of the lofty trees?
With yon red hunter of the deer?
Of gentle mien and shape, she seems
For civil halls designed,
Yet with the stately savage walks,
As she were of his kind.
Look on her leafy diadem,
Enriched with many a floral gem;
Those simple ornaments about
Her candid brow, disclose
The loitering springs last violet.
And summer's earliest rose;
But not a flower lies breathing there
Sweet as herself, or half so fair.
Exchanging lustre with the sun,
A part of day she strays,
A glancing, living, human smile
On Nature's face she plays.
Can none instruct me what are these
Companions of the lofty trees?
Intent to blend her with his lot,
Fate formed her all that he was not;
And, as by mere unlikeness, thoughts
Associate we see,
Their hearts, from very difference, caught
A perfect sympathy.
The household goddess here to be
Of that one dusky votary,
She left her pallid countrymen,
An earthling most divine,
And sought in this sequestered wood
A solitary shrine.
Behold them roaming hand in hand,
Like night and sleep, along the land;
Observe their movements: he for her
Restrains his active stride,
While she assumes a bolder gait
To ramble at his side;
Thus, even as the steps they frame,
Their souls fast alter to the same;
The one forsakes ferocity,
And momently grows mild;
The other tempers more and more
The artful with the wild.
She humanizes him, and he
Educates her to liberty.
Fate formed her all that he was not;
And, as by mere unlikeness, thoughts
Associate we see,
Their hearts, from very difference, caught
A perfect sympathy.
The household goddess here to be
Of that one dusky votary,
She left her pallid countrymen,
An earthling most divine,
And sought in this sequestered wood
A solitary shrine.
Behold them roaming hand in hand,
Like night and sleep, along the land;
Observe their movements: he for her
Restrains his active stride,
While she assumes a bolder gait
To ramble at his side;
Thus, even as the steps they frame,
Their souls fast alter to the same;
The one forsakes ferocity,
And momently grows mild;
The other tempers more and more
The artful with the wild.
She humanizes him, and he
Educates her to liberty.