Suwannee is desert now, ’Mid the murmur of its waves Naught but the scaly Albati[7] Is heard, and o’er Alachawa[8] Free and fearless bounds the deer; No fisher’s boat skims o’er the sea Around the island’s silver shore. We have lost our fathers’ home, Silently around their hearths, More lonely now than are their graves, Dim shadows stalk, and ask the gods Whither have their children fled. Hither will the white man come To herd his cattle in the glades Where happy villages once stood, And strew the ground he rests upon With mighty trees, which all who breathe Remember ever to have been The giant stocks which now they are. Warriors should brave and bear Grief a woman trembles at, But when they leave their native shore In fetters thus, the sternest hearts Will melt, and e’en a soldier’s eye Weep tears of bitter agony. He ceased, and scarcely had the winds his accents borne away, Than spoke out a young mother, on whose breast an infant lay; Her very voice was melody, and she sung her boy to sleep In tones whose earnest accent moved the listener to weep. My boy! my boy! thy father Is gone to the spirit-land, Where the pale-face cannot come, To dwell with the kindred band Of all the stout old chieftains Who ruled our race of yore, And hunted ’neath the dark pines We shall gaze upon no more. He sat within his wigwam, And thou wert on his knee, When first the rattle of the drum Rolled through our forests free; But he lies in the hammock With his face toward the stars, And wounds all red and gory In his breast, ’mid older scars. He did not die a coward, For oft his rifle rang, And twice amid the foemen The loud scalp-song he sang. And when the death-shot struck him, ’Twas from no ignoble hand, But came from e’en the bravest Of all the hostile band. I knew thou wert a chieftain, And amid my grief and pain I strove to train thee up to win Me vengeance for the slain. But now our might is broken, And we must leave his grave For a land lying far away Beyond the western wave.