Bright choir! with lips untempted, and with zone Sparkling, and unapproached by touch profane; Ye, to whose gladsome bosoms ne'er was known The blight of sorrow, or the throb of pain; Rightly invoked,--if right the elected swain, On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore, Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain, Worthy the budding laurel-bough it bore,--[N] Farewell! a long farewell! I worship you no more. THE INDIAN. BY JONATHAN LAWRENCE, JUN. Away, away to forest shades! Fly, fly with me the haunts of men! I would not give my sunlit glades, My talking stream, and silent glen, For all the pageantry of slaves, Their fettered lives and trampled graves. Away from wealth! our wampum strings Ask not the toil, the woes of them From whom the lash, the iron wrings The golden dross, the tear-soiled gem; Yet bind our hearts in the pure tie That gold or gems could never buy. And power! what is it ye who rule The hands without the souls? oh, ye Can tell how mean the tinselled fool, With all his hollow mockery! The slave of slaves who hate, yet bow, With serving lip but scorning brow. And love, dear love! how can they feel The wild desire, the burning flame, That thrills each pulse and bids us kneel-- The power of the adored name; The glance that sins in the met eye, Yet loved for its idolatry! They never knew the perfect bliss, To clasp in the entwined bower Her trembling form, to steal the kiss She would deny but hath not power; To list that voice that charms the grove, And trembles when it tells of love. Nor have they felt the pride, the thrill, When bounding for the fated deer; O'er rock and sod, o'er vale and hill, The hunter flies, nor dreams of fear, And brings his maid the evening prey, To speak more love than words can say. Have they in death the sod, the stones, The silence of the shading tree; Where glory decks the storied bones Of him whose life, whose death, was free; And minstrel mourns his arm whose blow The foeman cowered and quailed below? No; they, confined and fettered, they The sons of sires to fame unknown, With nerveless hands and souls of clay, Half life, half death, loathe, but live on; And sink unsung, ignobly lie In dark oblivion's apathy. Poor fools! the wild and mountain chase Would rend their frail and sickly forms; But for their God, how would they face, Our bands of fire, our sons of storms; Breasts that have never recked of fears, And eyes that leave to women, tears. They tell us of their kings, who gave To them our wild, unfettered shore; To them! why let them chain the wave, And hush its everlasting roar! Then may we own their sway, but hark! Our warriors never miss their mark.