Part 2 — THE BAPTISM OF POCAHONTAS.

ON THE PICTURE IN THE ROTUNDA AT WASHINGTON.

Sweet, gentle girl! in holy meekness bending,

Though of a wilder race and darker hue;

Etherial light is on thy soul descending,

Loveliest of wild flowers! like thy native dew.

Seen in the struggling of that heaving breast,

The quivering lip—the downward, fawn-like eye,

The strange, deep penitence that will not rest,

That gushes tears, and vents the swelling sigh.

From thy dark shades of superstitious lore,

Thou com’st arrayed in purest vestal white,

That he, the man of God, might on thee pour

Jordan’s still wave, to give thy blindness sight;

And to that heart, where hath been deeply stealing,

The fading bloom of earth’s bright flowery way,

A brighter—far enduring bliss revealing,

In the pure path of Truth’s eternal ray.

Bound in the rapture that thy beauty lendeth,

Thy pale-face lover at thy lonely side,

Holdeth with silent joy the book that blendeth

Life and life’s hope—its comfort and its guide.

Breathing in his warm look the bliss that springing—

The pure, bright thoughts that thrill his yearning breast,

The golden visions that around are flinging,

Their airy spells of future love and rest.

But there is one upon the ground reposing,

With curious gaze, yet wild, irreverent air,

Whose fallen deer-skin her full charms disclosing,

With beaded arms, and crimson braided hair,

Declares her kindred to thy own wild race,

The swift-foot wanderer of thy early day;

When by Powhatan’s stream thy footstep’s trace

Told, where like fawns ye frolick’d in your play.

And one, in beauty of majestic form,

Who stands erect, with scorn like lightning’s gleam

Darting from eyes as black as ebon-storm,

When midnight revels with its vivid beam—

Who will not brook a sister’s sacred vow,

The solemn faith, the strange baptismal rite—

Who will not bend in holy praise, or bow,

When in deep prayer the list’ning throng unite.

Oh! in this hour, while angels’ harps are swelling,

The rich rejoicing of the upper skies,

While the sweet anthem of the earth is telling

That one crush’d wild flower ’neath the altar lies.

Would that a ray, from that pure shrine descending,

Might pierce the darkness of thy forest kind—

Lighting a pathway that to thee is lending

Thy surest hope the spirit-home to find.

A. F. H.