The haunts, the friendships, and the hopes of youth —
All, all forsaken; — no dear voice,
Ever again to bid his heart rejoice!
Familiar scenes and faces
Only in dreams should he behold again;
But, in their places,
The wilderness, wild beasts, and savage men!
Soon from that poignant thought
His soul upon the wings of hope took flight;
And strong imagination brought
Visions of joy before his inward sight.
Of regions yet by Englishmen unsought,
And ancient woods, was that delightful dream,
The broad savannah, and the silver stream.
Fair bowers were there, and gardens smiled,
And harvests flourish’d in the wild;
And, while he made Redeeming Love his theme,
Savage no longer now —
The Indians stood around,
And drank salvation with the sound.
One Christian grave was there,
Turf’d well, and weeded by his pious care,
And redolent of many a fragrant flower
And herb profusely planted all about.
Within his bower
An old man sate, in patience and in peace,
While the low sands of life ran out,
Awaiting his release.
That old man laid his hand upon his head,
And blest him daily, when the day was done;
And Heaven was open to him, and he saw
His mother’s spirit smile, and bless her son.
Thus to the voluntary dream resign’d
He lay, while blended sounds of air and sea
Lull’d his unconscious mind
With their wild symphony.
The wind was in the pines, awakening there
A sea-like sound continuous, and a swell
At fitful intervals, that mingled well
With ocean’s louder roar,
When the long curling waves,
Reach after reach in regular rising, fell
Upon the sandy shore.
Long might he there have lain, but that, in tones
Which seem’d of haste to tell,
Once, twice, and thrice pronounced he heard his name:
Too sweetly to his ears the accents came,
Breathed from the gentle lips of Annabel.
With hurried pace she comes, and flush’d in face,
And with a look, half-pity, half-affright,
Which, while she spake, enlarged her timid eyes:
“O, sir! I have seen a piteous sight!”
The shuddering maiden cries;
“A poor wild woman. Woe is me! among
What worse than heathen people are we thrown?
Beasts, in our England, are not treated thus, — ,
Our very stones would rise
Against such cruelties!
But you, perhaps, can reach the stony heart,
Oh come, then, and perform your Christian part.”
She led him hastily toward a shed,
Where, fetter’d to the door-post, on the ground
An Indian woman sate. Her hands were bound,
Her shoulders and her back were waled and scored
With recent stripes. A boy stood by,
Some seven years old, who with a piteous eye
Beheld his suffering mother, and deplored
Her injuries with a cry,
Deep, but not loud, — an utterance that express’d
The mingled feelings swelling in his breast,
Instinctive love intense, the burning sense
Of wrong, intolerable grief of heart,
And rage, to think his arm could not fulfil
The pious vengeance of his passionate will.
His sister by the door
Lay basking in the sun: too young was she
To feel the burthen of their misery;
Reckless of all that pass’d, her little hand
Play’d idly with the soft and glittering sand.
At this abhorred sight,
Had there been place for aught
But pity, half-relieved by indignation,
They would have seen that Indian woman’s face
Not with surprise alone, but admiration:
“With such severe composure, such an air
Of stern endurance, did she bear
Her lot of absolute despair.
You rather might have deem’d,
So fix’d and hard the strong bronze features seem’d,
That they were of some molten statue part,
Than the live sentient index of a heart
Suffering and struggling with extremest wrong:
But that the coarse jet hair upon her back
Hung loose, and lank, and long,
And that sometimes she moved her large black eye,
And look’d upon the boy who there stood weeping by.
Oliver in vain attempted to assuage,
With gentle tones and looks compassionate,
The bitterness of that young Indian’s rage.
The boy drew back abhorrent from his hand,
Eyed him with fierce disdain, and breathed
In inarticulate sounds his deadly hate.
Not so the mother; she could understand
His thoughtful pity, and the tears which fell
Copiously down the cheeks of Annabel.
Touch’d by that unaeeustom’d sympathy
Her countenance relax’d: she moved her head
As if to thank them both;
Then frowning, as she raised her mournful eye,
“Bad Christian-man! bad English-man!” she said:
And Oliver a sudden sense of shame
Felt for the English and the Christian name.
IV. THE CAPTIVES RANSOMED.
OLIVER.
I PRAY you, sir, who owns the Indian woman
That is chain’d in yonder hut?
CAPE’S-MAN.
What you have seen them,
The she-wolf and her whelps?
OLIVER.
She hath indeed
A strange wild aspect, and the boy appears
Of a fierce nature. I should think her owner
Would find her an unprofitable slave.
CAPE’S-MAN.
Why, sir, you reckon rightly; and, methinks,
Without a conjuror’s skill you well may think so:
Those fetters, and the marks upon her skin,
Speak her deserts. On week-days with the whip
We keep her tightly to her work; but thus
Her Sabbath must be spent, or she would put
The wilderness between her and her owner.
An honest dealer never paid good money
For a worse piece: and for that boy of hers,
He is a true-bred savage, blood and bone,
To the marrow and heart’s core.
RANDOLPH.
I warrant him!
No mother like your squaw to train a child
In the way she would have him go; she makes him subtler
Than the sly snake, untameable as bear
Or buffalo, fierce as a famish’d wolf,
And crueller than French judges, Spanish friars,
Or Dutchmen in the East. His earliest plaything
Is a green scalp, and then, for lollipop,
The toasted finger of an Englishman!
Young as he is, I dare be sworn he knows
Where is the liveliest part to stick a skewer
Into a prisoner’s flesh, and where to scoop
The tenderest mouthful. If the Devil himself
Would learn devices to afflict the damn’d
With sharper torments, he might go to school
To a New England savage.
CAPE’S-MAN.
I perceive, sir,
You know them well. Perhaps you may have heard
&n
bsp; Of this young deviling’s father; — he was noted
For a most bloody savage in his day:
They called him Kawnacom.
RANDOLPH.
What! Kawnacom,
The Narhaganset Sagamore?
CAPE’S-MAN.
The same;
A sort of captain, or of prince, among them.
RANDOLPH.
A most notorious villain! But I left him
At peace with the English?
CAPE’S-MAN.
And you find him so,
Under the only bail he would not break;
A bullet through the heart is surety for him.
You have not learnt, I guess, what dreadful work
There is in the back country? — Families
Burnt in their houses; stragglers tomahawk’d
And scalp’d, or dragg’d away that they may die
By piecemeal murder, to make mockery
For these incarnate devils at the stake.
Farms are forsaken; towns are insecure;
Men sleep with one eye open, and the gun
By their bed-side. And, what is worst, they know not
How far the league extends, nor whom to trust
Among these treacherous tribes. Old people say
That things were not so bad in the Pequod war.
RANDOLPH.
What then, have we been idle?
CAPE’S-MAN.
Hitherto
But little has been done. The evil found us
Lapp’d in security, and unprepared:
Nor know we where to strike, nor whom, so darkly
The mischief hath been laid.
RANDOLPH.
Strike where we will,
So we strike hard, we cannot err. The blow
That rids us of an Indian does good service.
OLIVER.
That were a better service which should win
The savage to your friendship.
CAPE’S-MAN.
You are young, sir,
And, I perceive, a stranger in the land;
Or you would know how bootless is the attempt
To tame and civilise these enemies,
Man-beasts, or man-fiends, — call them which you will,
Their monstrous nature being half brute, half devil,
Nothing about them human but their form.
He, who expends his kindness on a savage
Thinking to win his friendship, might as wisely
Plant thorns and hope to gather grapes at vintage.
OLIVER.
Look but to Martha’s vineyard, and behold
On your own shores the impossibility
Achieved — the standing miracle display’d
In public view, apparent to all eyes,
And famous through all countries wheresoe’er
The Gospel truth is known! Many are the hearts
In distant England which have overflow’d
With pious joy to read of Hiacoomes,
Whose prayerful house the pestilence past by;
And blind Wawompek, — he, within whose doors
The glad thanksgiving strain of choral praise
Fails not, at morn and eve, from year to year;
And the Sachem, who rejoiced because the time
Of light was come, and now his countrymen,
Erring and lost, no longer should go down
In ignorance and darkness to the grave;
And poor old Lazarus, that rich poor man,
The child of poverty, but rich in faith
And his assured inheritance in heaven.
RANDOLPH.
Young sir, it is with stories as with men;
That credit oftentimes they gain abroad,
Which, either for misluck or misdesert,
They fail to find at home.
OLIVER.
Are these things false, then?
Is there no truth in Mayhew’s life of love?
Hath not the impatient Welshman’s zeal, that blazed
Even like a burning and consuming fire,
Refined itself into a steady light
Among the Indians? — and the name of Williams,
The signal once for strife where’er he went,
Become a passport and a word of peace
Through savage nations? Or is this a tale
Set forth to mock our weak credulity;
And all that holy Eliot hath perform’d —
Only a fable cunningly devised?
CAPE’S-MAN.
He comes out qualified to lecture us
Upon our own affairs!
RANDOLPH.
The things you talk of
Serve but with us to comfort our old women,
Furnish an elder with some choice discourse
For a dull synod, and sometimes help out
Sir Spintext at a pinch, when he would think it
A sin did he dismiss his hungry flock
Before the second glass be fairly spent.
Much have you read, and have believed as largely;
And yet one week’s abode in the colony
Will teach you more than all your English reading.
OLIVER.
Sir, I am easy of belief, for that way
My temper leads me, — liable to err;
And yet, I hope, not obstinate in error;
But ready still to thank the riper judgment
That may correct my inexperienced years.
You paint the Indians to the life, I doubt not:
Children of sin, and therefore heirs of wrath,
The likeness of their Heavenly Sire in them
Seems utterly defaced; and in its stead,
Almost, it might be thought, the Evil Power
Had set his stamp and image. This should move us
The more to deep compassion; men ourselves,
In whom the accident of birth alone —
Makes all this awful difference! And remembering,
That from our common parent we derive
Our nature’s common malady innate,
For which our common Saviour offers us
The only cure, — oh! ought we not to feel
How good and merciful a deed it were
To bring these poor lost sheep within his fold!
RANDOLPH.
Sheep call yon them, forsooth! When you can gather
Bears, wolves, and tigers in a fold, hope then
To tame such sheep as these.
OLIVER.
What is there, sir,
That may not by assiduous care be won
To do our will? Give me a lion’s cub,
Torn from the tent, and I will so train up
The noble beast, that he shall fondle me,
And lay his placid head upon my knees,
And lick my hand, and couch my bed-side,
And guard me with a dog’s fidelity.
RANDOLPH.
Behold a litter ready to your wish!
Our friend, if I mistake not, will afford
An easy purchase, dam and cubs. What say you,
My lion-tamer?
CAPE’S-MAN.
You shall have them cheap, sir! A bargain that may tempt you; come, for half
That they would fetch in the Barbadoes market.
I meant to ship them thither, but would rather
Sell at a loss than keep that woman longer.
Thus had the jeer grown serious, and it drew
Into the young man’s cheek a deeper hue.
Moments there are in life, — alas, how few!
When, casting cold prudential doubts aside,
We take a generous impulse for our guide,
And, following promptly what the heart thinks best, Commit to Providence the rest,
Sure that no after-reckoning will arise,
Of shame, or sorrow, for the heart is wise.
And happy they who thus in faith obey
Their better natu
re: err sometimes they may,
And some sad thoughts lie heavy in the breast,
Such as by hope deceived are left behind;
But, like a shadow, these will pass away
From the pure sunshine of the peaceful mind.
Thus feeling, Oliver obey’d
His uncorrupted heart; nor paused, nor weigh’d
What hindrance, what displeasure might ensue;
But from his little store of worldly wealth,
Poor as it was, the ready ransom drew.
Half-earnest, half-sarcastic, Randolph now
Sought him from that rash purpose to dissuade;
While the hard Cape’s-man, nothing nice,
Counted the money, glad to get his price.
V. THE PORTRAIT.
AT length the adverse gales have ceased;
The breath of morn is from the east,
Where, burnishing with gold the restless sea,
Uprose the sun in radiant majesty.
Unfelt that breath upon the seas,
Unheard amid the silent trees,
It breathes so quietly:
Yet have the seamen, on their way intent,
Perceived the auspicious sign. The sails are bent,
The anchor raised; the swelling canvas now
Fills with the fresh’ning breeze; the Cape recedes,
Its sandhills and its pines
In distance fade away.
Steady she holds her course; and still the day
Is young, when lo! the haven is in sight;
And ere from his meridian height the sun
Declines, within that haven’s gentle breast,
From the long labours of her weary way,
The vessel comes to rest.
Scatter’d within the peaceful bay
Many a fair isle and islet lay,
And rocks and banks which threaten’d there
No peril to the mariner.
The shores which bent around were gay
With maizals, and with pastures green,
And rails and hedge-row trees between,
And fields for harvest white,
And dwellings sprinkled up and down;
And round about the cluster’d town.
Which rose in sunshine bright,
Was many a shelter’d garden spot,
And many a sunny orchard plot,
And bowers which might invite
The studious man to take his seat
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 193