There where uprises a wild knoll, o’erstrewn With wrecks of ancient forest, in mid-stream Once rose an island, green and beautiful With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore; A river-island where the woodman built,-- Stream-guarded from the savage-haunted shore,-- His rude log cabin. Here he sowed his maize; Here saw it tassel in the summer heat, And glance like ranks of feathered Indians through The glimmering vistas of the broken wood; Here reaped and sheaved its stalks, all ivory-eared, In shocks like wigwam rows, when like a maid, An Indian maid, ruddy in dogwood beads, The autumn came, soft o’er the sunset hills, That blushed for love, and underneath her feet Cast untold gold in leaves and yellow fruit. Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died, And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth And loam of what was once an island; now A bed of limestone rock and water pools,-- Where, in the quarry, you may see the blast Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone, And flap and pound its echoes round the hills In giant strokes as of some Titan hammer;-- A mound of stump-pierced soil where once an isle,-- As rich and fair in forest and in field As any isle that rises to a sail In tropic seas,--arose to kiss the sun.
There lies the other half of what was once Corn Island: broad the channel beats between. Lower it lies, and mantled with dwarf brakes Of willow and of cottonwood and beech, Degenerate offsprings of the mighty boles That once o’erbrowed the stream in majesty Of tall primeval beauty. In the morn, Ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush, Here you may hear the melancholy snipe Piping, or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky soil.
Here once the Indian stole in natural craft From wahoo-bush to bush, from tree to tree, His head plumes like a bird, below, above, Fluttering and nodding ’mid the undergrowth; In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow, And at his back his gaudy quiver filled With tufted arrows headed blue with flint. And while the deep flamingo-colored west Flamed on his ruddy cheek, and airy fire Struck rosy ’thwart the stream, he, swift as thought, Strung his quick bow and through the gray wild goose, That rose with clamor from the rushy pool, Sent a fleet arrow; crested with the quills Which yesterday, perhaps, its mate’s gray wing Made beautiful; and plucked to decorate The painted shaft that should to-day speed home And redden all their white with kindred blood: It falling, gasping at his moccasined feet, Breathed out its wild life, while the lonely brave Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills Answered his exultation with a whoop.