No aim like his the tomahawk sent, Like his none bent the bow, And none so swift across the lake Could dart the light canoe— His form ’twas like his native pines, Erect his manly grace, And in his hardy mind there beamed The courage of his race. The morn had decked the eastern sky When on the Bantam lake Nootonuc’s birch canoe was seen The glass like wave to break— He passed the low and swampy mouth Of Bantam’s sluggish tide, And near the pine clad eastern shore His bark was seen to glide. Why did he slack his swift career Upon the eastern shore? Was it to see the bright sun’s rays The blue wave silvering oer— ’Twas not to view the sun’s bright rays Silvering the curling wave,— Far other thoughts then swelled his breast And fir’d his courage brave— And yet the scene might well have stopt Nootonuc’s rapid course; Might well have filled a nobler mind With beauty’s gladdening force. The rising sun just fringed the clouds, Just tinged the eastern pines, While on the pebbly shore beneath The darkness still reclines. The tall dark pines in lengthened shade Reposed upon the lake, While oft beneath their gloomy tops The rising light would break— In broad expanse to westward lay The still dark bosom’d tide, While many a point, in splendour drest, Rose gay on every side— The wave beneath its brightening banks Reposed so silently, ’Twas like the sleep that infants feel When friends are smiling by— No ripple broke the mirror there, No mark the tide defaced, Save the long track the swift canoe Upon the surface trac’d— Nootonuc gazed a moment there, Then to the beach he turned, And long before the boat had stopp’d The lagging wave he spurn’d— For on the shore a form there stood Than morning light more dear; Beneath whose feet the wavelets slept A mirror light and clear— “Oh land not here,” Ompoia said, “My love, oh! land not here; My father stern will see thy bark, E’en now his voice I hear—