Having introduced this not altogether gratuitous description of a spot celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I resume the rhythmical tale of the chief of the Roanokes.
It was many seasons ago, How long I cannot tell my brother, That this sad thing befell; The tale was old in the time of my father, To whom it was told by my mother's mother. My brother hears--'tis well-- Nor may he doubt my speech; The red man's mind receives a tale As snow the print of a mocassin; But, when he hath it once, It abides like a footstep chisell'd in rock, The hard and flinty rock. The pale man writes his tales Upon a loose and fluttering leaf, Then gives it to the winds that sweep Over the ocean of the mind; The red man his on the evergreen Of his trusty memory(1). When he from the far-off land would know The tales of his father's day, He unrolls the spirit-skin[A], And utters what it bids: The Indian pours from his memory His song, as a brook its babbling flood From a lofty rock into a dell, In the pleasant summer-moon.-- My brother hears.--
He hears my words--'tis well-- And let him write them down Upon the spirit-skin, That, when he has cross'd the lake, The Great Salt Lake, The lake, where the gentle spring winds dwell, And the mighty fishes sport, And has called his babes to his knee, And his beauteous dove to his arms, And has smok'd in the calumet With the friends he left behind, And his father, and mother, and kin, Are gather'd around his fire, To learn what red men say, He may the skin unroll, and bid His Okki this tradition read[B]-- The parting words of the Roanoke, And his tale of a lover and maiden true, Who paddle the Lake in a White Canoe.
There liv'd upon the Great Arm's brink[C], In that far day, The warlike Roanokes, The masters of the wilds: They warr'd on distant lands, This valiant nation, victors every where; Their shouts rung through the hollow oaks, That beetle over the Spirit Bay[D], Where the red elk comes to drink; The frozen clime of the Hunter's Star Rang shrill with the shout of their bands, And the whistle of their cress[E]; And they fought the distant Cherokee, The Chickasaw, and the Muscogulgee, And the Sioux of the West. They liv'd for nought but war, Though now and then would be caught a view Of a Roanoke in a White Canoe.