He hurries to his tent;--oh rage! despair! No glimpse, no tidings of the frantic fair; Save that some carmen, as acamp they drove, Had seen her coursing for the western grove. Faint with fatigue and choked with burning thirst, Forth from his friends with bounding leap he burst, Vaults o'er the palisade with eyes on flame, And fills the welkin with Lucinda's name, Swift thro the wild wood paths phrenetic springs,-- Lucind! Lucinda! thro the wild wood rings. All night he wanders; barking wolves alone And screaming night-birds answer to his moan; For war had roused them from their savage den; They scent the field, they snuff the walks of men.
The fair one too, of every aid forlorn, Had raved and wander'd, till officipus morn Awaked the Mohawks from their short repose, To glean the plunder, ere their comrades rose. Two Mohawks met the maid,--historian, hold!-- Poor Human Nature! must thy shame be told? Where then that proud preeminence of birth, Thy Moral Sense? the brightest boast of earth. Had but the tiger changed his heart for thine, Could rocks their bowels with that heart combine, Thy tear had gusht, thy hand relieved her pain, And led Lucinda to her lord again.
She starts, with eyes upturn'd and fleeting breath, In their raised axes views her instant death, Spreads her white hands to heaven in frantic prayer, Then runs to grasp their knees, and crouches there. Her hair, half lost along the shrubs she past, Rolls in loose tangles round her lovely waist; Her kerchief torn betrays the globes of snow That heave responsive to her weight of woe. Does all this eloquence suspend the knife? Does no superior bribe contest her life? There does: the scalps by British gold are paid; A long-hair'd scalp adorns that heavenly head; Arid comes the sacred spoil from friend or foe, No marks distinguish, and no man can know.
With calculating pause and demon grin, They seize her hands, and thro her face divine Drive the descending ax; the shriek she sent Attain'd her lover's ear; he thither bent With all the speed his wearied limbs could yield, Whirl'd his keen blade, and stretch'd upon the field The yelling fiends; who there disputing stood Her gory scalp, their horrid prize of blood. He sunk delirious on her lifeless clay, And past, in starts of sense, the dreadful day.