When first I pressed thy cheek, love, ’Twas in the month of May, You chidingly rebuked me, Yet bid me longer stay— And gave me back my kiss, love, Before I went away.
And when I met thee last, love, Beneath the trysting-tree, Before I went away, love, Beyond the roaring sea, That dewy kiss at parting Was a priceless gem to me.
They wrote me of thy death, love, How could it ever be! And that those lips in dying Were whispering for me— The very lips that I had pressed Beneath the trysting-tree.
O! all the wealth I’ve hoarded I’d freely give away, Could I that day live o’er again, In the pleasant month of May; And could I but renew that kiss I’d give my life away.
The Indian race is rapidly becoming extinct; even now some tribes that once numbered their thousand warriors no longer exist, and those that still have a name are degraded and debased both in mind and body, and are fast vanishing away, “like snow-wreaths in a thaw.” Not three centuries have elapsed since the white man landed on our shores, and begged as a gift, or bought for a trifle, from the rightful owners of the soil, a small tract of land; and _now_ he owns it all, and noble cities and thriving villages stand on the loved hunting-grounds and burial-places of the red man. In a few years more the race will have passed away, and the place that once knew them will know them no more forever.
Yet we shall never forget them, for our country is full of monuments to their memory; we have Indian names for our towns, villages and rivers—and there are Indian legends attached to almost every high hill, every dark, dismal cave, or bold, bare rock. These legends are always thrilling, and often painfully so, for they show vividly the strongly marked characteristics of the Indian race, their endurance and contempt of hardship, their stoical indifference to suffering and death, their lasting remembrance of kindness received, and, above all, their deadly revenge of injuries.
In the present county of La Salle, and state of Illinois, there is a rock some forty or fifty feet high, standing out boldly from the bank of the Illinois river. The summit is level, perfectly destitute of vegetation, and is attained only by a narrow and difficult foot-path. In that prairie land, the rock is very notable, as being the only elevation for miles around; its bold, jagged and nearly perpendicular lines on the river-side seem to swell its height and increase its frightfulness, while the dull gray color of the rock itself, and its scathed appearance, contrast strangely with the “smoothness and sheen” of the river and the verdant prairie.