There, gloomily, against the sky
The Dark Isles rear their summits high;
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare,
Lifts its gray turrets in the air-
Seen from afar, like some strong-hold
Built by the ocean-kings of old;

And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin,
Swells in the north vast Katadin :
And, wandering from its marshy feet,
The broad Penobscot comes to meet

And mingle with his own bright bay.
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods,
Arch'd over by the ancient woods,
Which Time, in those dim solitudes,
Wielding the dull axe of Decay,
Alone hath ever shorn away.

Not thus, within the woods which hide
The beauty of thy azure tide,

And with their falling timbers block
Thy broken currents, Kennebeck!
Gazes the white man on the wreck

Of the down-trodden Norridgewock-
In one lone village hemm'd at length,
In battle shorn of half their strength,
Turn'd, like the panther in his lair,

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet,
For one last struggle of despair,

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet!
Unreap'd, upon the planting lands,
The scant, neglected harvest stands:

No shout is there, no dance, no song:
The aspect of the very child
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild,
Of bitterness and wrong.
The almost infant Norridgewock
Essays to lift the tomahawk;
And plucks his father's knife away,
To mimic, in his frightful play,

The scalping of an English foe:
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile,
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while

Some bough or sapling meets his blow.
The fisher, as he drops his line,
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver
Along the margin of the river,

Looks up and down the rippling tide,
And grasps the firelock at his side.
For BOMAZEEN from Tacconock
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock,

With tidings that MOULTON and HARMON of York
Far up the river have come;

They have left their boats-they have enter'd the wood,

And filled the depths of the solitude

With the sound of the ranger's drum.

On the brow of a hill which slopes to meet
The flowing river, and bathe its feet-
The bare-wash'd rock, and the drooping grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass-
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,
Built up in that wild by unskill'd hands;
Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer,
For the holy sign of the cross is there:

And should he chance at that place to be,

Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallow'd day, When prayers are made, and masses are said, Some for the living and some for the dead, Well might that traveller start to see

The tall, dark forms, that take their way From the birch canoe, on the river-shore, And the forest-paths, to that chapel-door; And marvel to mark the naked knees

And the dusky foreheads bending there, And, stretching his long, thin arms over these, In blessing and in prayer,

Like a shrouded spectre, pale and tall,
In his coarse, white vesture, Father RALLE!*
Two forms are now in that chapel dim,

The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale,
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale,
Which a stranger is telling him.
That stranger's garb is soil'd and torn,
And wet with dew, and loosely worn;
Her fair, neglected hair falls down

O'er cheeks with storm and sunshine brown;
Yet still, in that disorder'd face,
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace
Those elements of former grace,
Which, half-effaced, seem scarcely less,
Even now, than perfect loveliness.
With drooping head, and voice so low

That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears-
While through her clasped fingers flow,
From the heart's fountain, hot and slow,
Her penitential tears-

She tells the story of the wo

And evil of her years.

"O, father, bear with me; my heart
Is sick and death-like, and my brain
Seems girdled with a fiery chain,
Whose scorching links will never part,
And never cool again.

Bear with me while I speak-but turn
Away that gentle eye, the while-
The fires of guilt more fiercely burn
Beneath its holy smile;

For half I fancy I can see
My mother's sainted look in thee.
"My dear, lost mother! sad and pale,
Mournfully sinking day by day,
And with a hold on life as frail

As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray,

* Pere RALLE, or RASLES, was one of the most zealous and indefatigable of that band of Jesuit missionaries who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, penetrated the forests of America, with the avowed object of converting the heathen. The first religious mission of the Jesuits to the savages in North America was in 1611.

RALLE, or RASLES, established himself sometime about the year 1670, at Norridgewock, where he continued more than forty years. He was accused, and, perhaps, not without justice, of exciting his praying Indians against the English, whom he looked upon as the enemies not only of his king, but also of the Catholic religion. He was killed by the English, in 1724, at the foot of the cross which his own hands had planted. This Indian church was broken up, and its members either killed outright or dispersed.

Hang feebly on their parent spray,
And tremble in the gale;

Yet watching o'er my childishness
With patient fondness-not the less
For all the agony which kept
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept;
And checking every tear and groan
That haply might have waked my own;
And bearing still, without offence,
My idle words and petulance;

Reproving with a tear-and, while
The tooth of pain was keenly preying
Upon her very heart, repaying

My brief repentance with a smile.
"O, in her meek, forgiving eye
There was a brightness not of mirth-
A light, whose clear intensity

Was borrowed not of earth.
Along her cheek a deepening red
Told where the feverish hectic fed;
And yet, each fatal token gave
To the mild beauty of her face
A newer and a dearer grace,

Unwarning of the grave.

"T was like the hue which autumn gives To yonder changed and dying leaves,

Breathed over by his frosty breath;
Scarce can the gazer feel that this
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss,
The mocking-smile of Death!
"Sweet were the tales she used to tell,
When summer's eve was dear to us,
And, fading from the darkening dell,
The glory of the sunset fell

On giant Agamenticus,—
Even as an altar, lighting up
The gray rocks of its rugged top,-
When, sitting by our cottage wall,
The murmur of the Saco's fall,

And the south wind's expiring sighs
Came, softly blending, on my ear,
With the low tones I loved to hear:-
Tales of the pure, the good, the wise,
The holy men and maids of old,
In the all-sacred pages told ;-
Of RACHEL, stoop'd at Haran's fountains,
Amid her father's thirsty flock,
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming
As the bright angels of his dreaming,
On Padan-aram's holy rock;
Of gentle RUTH-and her who kept
Her awful vigil on the mountains,
By Israel's virgin daughters wept;
Of MIRIAM, with her maidens, singing
The song for grateful Israel meet,
While every crimson wave was bringing
The spoils of Egypt at her feet;
Of her Samaria's humble daughter,

Who paused to hear, beside her well, Lessons of love and truth which fell Softly as Shiloh's flowing water;

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, The Promised One, so long foretold By holy seer and bard of old,

Reveal'd before her wondering eyes!

Slowly she faded. Day by day
Her step grew weaker in our hall,
And fainter, at each even-fall,
Her sad voice died away.

Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while,
Sat Resignation's holy smile:
And even my father check'd his tread,
And hush'd his voice, beside her bed:
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke
Of her meek eye's imploring look,
The scowl of hate his brow forsook,

And, in his stern and gloomy eye,
At times, a few unwonted tears
Wet the dark lashes, which for years
Hatred and pride had kept so dry.

"Calm as a child to slumber soothed,
As if an angel's hand had smoothed
The still, white features into rest,
Silent and cold, without a breath

To stir the drapery on her breast,
Pain, with its keen and poison'd fang,
The horror of the mortal pang,
The suffering look her brow had worn,
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone-
She slept at last in death!

"O, tell me, father, can the dead

Walk on the earth, and look on us, And lay upon the living's head

Their blessing or their curse? For, O, last night she stood by me, As I lay beneath the woodland tree!" The Jesuit crosses himself in awe"Jesu! what was it my daughter saw?"

"She came to me last night.

The dried leaves did not feel her tread; She stood by me in the wan moonlight, In the white robes of the dead!

Pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me.

I heard no sound-I felt no breath

Breathe o'er me from that face of death:
Its blue eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet, in their fix'd, unchanging gaze,
Something, which spoke of early days-
A sadness in their quiet glare,

As if love's smile were frozen there-
Came o'er me with an icy thrill;
O GOD! I feel its presence still!”
The Jesuit makes the holy sign-
"How pass'd the vision, daughter mine?"
"All dimly in the wan moonshine,
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine,
And scatter, and melt into the light-
So scattering-melting on my sight,
The pale, cold vision pass'd;
But those sad eyes were fix'd on mine
Mournfully to the last."

"God help thee, daughter, tell me why
That spirit pass'd before thine eye!"
"Father, I know not, save it be

That deeds of mine have summon'd her

Of frequent change and daily strife;
And-GoD forgive him!-left his child
To feel, like him, a freedom wild;
To love the red man's dwelling-place,
The birch boat on his shaded floods,
The wild excitement of the chase

Sweeping the ancient woods,
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore

Of the still lakes, the clear stream, where
The idle fisher sets his wear,

Or angles in the shade, far more

Than that restraining awe I felt Beneath my gentle mother's care,

When nightly at her knee I knelt, With childhood's simple prayer.

"There came a change. The wild, glad mood Of uncheck'd freedom pass'd.

Amid the ancient solitude

Of unshorn grass and waving wood,
And waters glancing bright and fast,
A soften'd voice was in my ear,"
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine
The hunter lifts his head to hear,
Now far and faint, now full and near-
The murmur of the wind-swept pine.

A manly form was ever nigh,
A bold, free hunter, with an eye

Whose dark, keen glance had power to wake Both fear and love-to awe and charm;

"T was as the wizard rattlesnake,
Whose evil glances lure to harm-
Whose cold and small and glittering eye,
And brilliant coil, and changing dye,
Draw, step by step, the gazer near,
With drooping wing and cry of fear,
Yet powerless all to turn away,
A conscious, but a willing prey!
"The world that I had known went by
As a vain shadow.-On my eye

There rose a new and dreamful one.
"T was like the cloudy realms which lie,
Shadowy and brief, on autumn's sky,
Before the setting sun.

O, father, scarce to GoD above
With deeper trust, with stronger love,
No human heart was ever lent,
No human knee was ever bent,
Than I, before a human shrine,
As mortal and as frail as mine,

With heart, and soul, and mind, and form,
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm.

«Full soon, upon that dream of sin,
An awful light came bursting in.
The shrine was cold, at which I knelt;
The idol of that shrine was gone.

An humbled thing of shame and guilt,
Outcast, and spurn'd and lone,

Wrapt in the shadows of my crime,
With withering heart and burning brain,
And tears that fell like fiery rain,

I pass'd a fearful time.

"There came a voice-it check'd the tearIn heart and soul it wrought a change;My father's voice was in my ear;

It whisper'd of revenge!
A new and fiercer feeling swept

Each lingering tenderness away;
And tiger passions, which had slept
In childhood's better day,
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length
In all their own demoniac strength.

"A youthful warrior of the wild,

By words deceived, by smiles beguiled,
Of crime the cheated instrument,
Upon our fatal errands went.

Through camp and town and wilderness
He tracked his victim; and, at last,
Just when the tide of hate had pass'd,
And milder thoughts came warm and fast,
Exulting, at my feet he cast

The bloody token of success.

"O GOD! with what an awful power

I saw the buried past uprise, And gather, in a single hour,

Its ghost-like memories! And then I felt-alas! too lateThat underneath the mask of hate, That shame and guilt and wrong had thrown O'er feelings which they might not own,

The heart's wild love had known no change;
And still, that deep and hidden love,
With its first fondness, wept above

The victim of its own revenge!
There lay the fearful scalp, and there
The blood was on its pale-brown hair!
I thought not of the victim's scorn,
I thought not of his baleful guile,
My deadly wrong, my outcast name,
The characters of sin and shame
On heart and forehead drawn ;

I only saw that victim's smile

The still, green places where we met-
The moon-lit branches, dewy wet;

I only felt, I only heard,

The greeting and the parting word

The smile, the embrace, the tone, which made An Eden of the forest shade.

"And O, with what a loathing eye, With what a deadly hate, and deep,

I saw that Indian murderer lie

Before me, in his drunken sleep! What though for me the deed was done, And words of mine had sped him on! Yet, when he murmur'd, as he slept,

The horrors of that deed of blood,
The tide of utter madness swept
O'er brain and bosom like a flood.

And, father, with this hand of mine”

Ha! what didst thou ?" the Jesuit cries, Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain,

And shading, with one thin hand, his eyes, With the other he makes the holy sign66 I smote him as I would a worm;With heart as steel'd-with nerves as firm: He never woke again!"

"Woman of sin and blood and shame, Speak-I would know that victim's name." "Father," she gasp'd, "a chieftain, known As Saco's sachem-MoGG MEGONE!"

Pale priest! What proud and lofty dreams,
What keen desires, what cherish'd schemes,
What hopes, that time may not recall,
Are darken'd by that chieftain's fall!
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow,
To lift the hatchet of his sire,
And, round his own, the church's foe,
To light the avenging fire?
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake,
For thine and for the church's sake?
Who summon to the scene
Of conquest and unsparing strife,
And vengeance, dearer than his life,
The fiery-soul'd CASTINE ?*

Three backward steps the Jesuit takes-
His long, thin frame as ague shakes.
Hate, fearful hate, is in his eye,
As from his lips these words of fear
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear-

66

The soul that sinneth shall surely die!"

She stands, as stands the stricken deer,

Check'd midway in the fearful chase,
When bursts, upon its eye and ear,
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near,

Between it and its hiding-place;
While still behind, with yell and blow,
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe.
"Save me, O holy man!"-her cry

Fills all the void, as if a tongue, Unseen, from rib and rafter hung, Thrilling with mortal agony;

Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's knee,

And her eye looks fearfully into his own;"Off, woman of sin!-nay, touch not me

With those fingers of blood ;--begone!" With a gesture of horror, he spurns the form That writhes at his feet like a trodden worm.

Ever thus the spirit must,

Guilty in the sight of Heaven,

The character of RALLE has probably never been correctly delineated. By his brethren of the Romish Church, he has been nearly apotheosized. On the other hand, our Puritan historians have represented him as a demon in human form. He was undoubtedly sincere in his devotion to the interests of his church, and not over: scrupulous as to the means of advancing those interests. "The French," says the author of the history of Saco and Biddeford, "after the peace of 1713, secretly promised to supply the Indians with arms and ammunition, if they would renew hostilities. Their principal agent was the celebrated RALLE, the French Jesuit."-p. 215.

With a keener wo be riven, For its weak and sinful trust In the strength of human dust; And its anguish thrill afresh,

For each vain reliance given To the failing arm of flesh.

PART III.

Gloomily against the wall
Leans thy working forehead, RALLE!
Ill thy troubled musings fit

The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace, at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.

Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturb'd by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings

Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along-
Fading hopes, for whose success

It were sin to breathe a prayer;

Thoughts which Heaven may never bless-
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won

To the pale of "Holy Church;"
And the heretic o'erthrown,
And his name no longer known,
And thy weary brethren turning,
Joyful, from their years of mourning,
"Twixt the altar and the porch.

Hark! what sudden sound is heard
In the wood and in the sky,
Shriller than the scream of bird-
Than the trumpet's clang more high?
Every wolf-cave of the hills-

Forest-arch and mountain-gorge,
Rock and dell and river-verge-
With an answering echo thrills.
Well does the Jesuit know that cry,
Which summons the Norridgewock to die,
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh.
He listens, and hears the rangers come,
With loud hurra, and jar of drum,
And hurrying feet, (for the chase is hot,)
And the short, sharp sound of the rifle-shot,
And taunt and menace-answered well
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell,
The bark of dogs, the squaw's mad scream,
The dash of paddles along the stream,
The whistle of shot, as it cuts the leaves
Of the maples around the church's eaves,
And the gride of hatches, at random thrown
On wigwam-log and tree and stone.

Black with the grime of paint and dust,
Spotted and streak'd with human gore,
A grim and naked head is thrust
Within the chapel-door.

66 Ha-ВOMAZEEN!-In GoD's name say, What mean these sounds of bloody fray?"

Silent, the Indian points his hand

To where, across the echoing glen,
Sweep HARMON's dreaded ranger-band,
And MOULTON with his men.
"Where are thy warriors, BoмAZEEN?
"Where are DE ROUVILLE* and CASTINE,
And where the braves of Sawga's queen?"
"Let my father find the winter snow
Which the sun drank up long moons ago!
Under the falls of Tacconock,

The wolves are eating the Norridgewock;
CASTINE with his wives lies closely hid
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid!
On Sawga's banks the man of war
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw-
SQUANDO has fled, and MoGG MEGONE,
Struck by the knife of Sagamore JOHN,
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone."
Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,

Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherish'd life-
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evil seen and done-

Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock,
In the church's service won.

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks,
As scowling on the priest he looks:
"Cowesass-cowesass-tawhich wessaseen?†
Let my father look upon BoмAZEEN-
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw,
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw.
Let my father ask his GoD to make

A dance and a feast for a great sagamore,
When he journeys across the western lake
With his dogs and his squaws to the spirit's shore.
Cowesass-cowesass-tawhich wessaseen?
Let my father die like BOMAZEEN!"

Through the chapel's narrow doors,

And through each window in the walls, Round the priest and warrior pours

The deadly shower of English balls. Low on his cross the Jesuit falls; While at his side the Norridgewock, With failing breath, essays to mock And menace yet the hated foeShakes his scalp-trophies to and fro

* HERTEL DE ROUVILLE was an active and unsparing enemy of the English. He was the leader of the combined French and Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703. He was afterwards killed in the attack upon Haverhill. Tradition says, that upon examining his dead body, his head and face were found to be perfectly smooth, without the slightest appearance of hair or beard.

+ Cowesass?-tawhich wessaseen? Are you afraid?— why fear you?

Exultingly before their eyes-
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow,
The mighty sachem dies.

"So fare all eaters of the frog!
Death to the Babylonish dog!

Down with the beast of Rome!" With shouts like these, around the dead, Unconscious on their bloody bed,

The rangers crowding come. Brave men! the dead priest cannot hear The unfeeling taunt, the brutal jeer; Spurn-for he sees ye not-in wrath, The symbol of your Saviour's death; Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal, And trample, as a thing accursed, The cross he cherish'd, in the dust: The dead man cannot feel!

Brutal alike in deed and word,

With callous heart and hand of strife, How like a fiend may man be made, Plying the foul and monstrous trade

Whose harvest-field is human life,
Whose sickle is the reeking sword!
Quenching, with reckless hand, in blood,
Sparks kindled by the breath of God;
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven
Of open guilt or secret sin,
Before the bar of that pure heaven
The holy only enter in!

O! by the widow's sore distress,
The orphan's wailing wretchedness,
By Virtue struggling in the accursed
Embraces of polluting Lust,
By the fell discord of the pit,
And the pain'd souls that people it,
And by the blessed peace which fills
The paradise of God forever,
Resting on all its holy hills,

And flowing with its crystal river-
Let Christian hands no longer bear
In triumph on his crimson car

The foul and idol god of war;
No more the purple wreaths prepare
To bind amid his snaky hair;

Nor Christian bards his glories tell,
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell.
Through the gun-smoke wreathing white,
Glimpses on the soldier's sight,

A thing of human shape, I ween,
For a moment only seen,

With its loose hair backward streaming,
And its eyeballs madly gleaming,

Shrieking, like a soul in pain,

From the world of light and breath, Hurrying to its place again,

Spectre-like it vanisheth!

Wretched girl! one eye alone
Notes the way which thou hast gone.
That great Eye which slumbers never,
Watching o'er a lost world ever,
Tracks thee over vale and mountain,
By the gushing forest-fountain,
Plucking from the vine its fruit,
Searching for the ground-nut's root,