THE DREAM OF THE DELAWARE.

“Sleep hath its own world,

And a wide realm of wild reality,

And dreams in their development have breath,

And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.”

On Alligewi’s^[1] mountain height

An Indian hunter lay reclining,

Gazing upon the sunset light

In all its loveliest grace declining.

Onward the chase he had since dawn

Pursued, with swift-winged step, o’er lawn,

And pine-clad steep, and winding dell,

And deep ravine, and covert nook

Wherein the red-deer loves to dwell,

And silent cove, and brawling brook;

Yet not till twilight’s mists descending,

Had dimmed the wooded vales below,

Did he, his homeward pathway wending,

Droop ’neath his spoil, with footsteps slow.

Then, as he breathless paused, and faint,

The shout of joy that pealed on high

As broke that landscape on his eye,

Imaginings alone can paint.

Down on the granite brow, his prey,

In all its antlered glory lay.

His plumage flowed above the spoil—

His quiver, and the slackened bow,

Companions of his ceaseless toil,

Lay careless at its side below.

Oh! who might gaze, and not grow brighter,

More pure, more holy, and serene;

Who might not feel existence lighter

Beneath the power of such a scene?

Marking the blush of light ascending

From where the sun had set afar,

Tinting each fleecy cloud, and blending

With the pale azure; while each star

Came smiling forth ’mid roseate hue,

And deepened into brighter lustre

As Night, with shadowy fingers threw

Her dusky mantle round each cluster.

Purple, and floods of gold, were streaming

Around the sunset’s crimson way,

And all the impassioned west was gleaming

With the rich flush of dying day.

Far, far below the wandering sight,

Seen through the gath’ring gloom of night,

A mighty river rushing on,

Seemed dwindled to a fairy’s zone.

No bark upon its wave was seen,

Or if ’twas there, it glided by

As viewless forms, that once have been,

Will flit, half-seen, before the eye.

Long gazed the hunter on that sight,

’Till twilight darkened into night,

Dim and more dim the landscape grew,

And duskier was the empyrean blue;

Glittered a thousand stars on high,

And wailed the night-wind sadly by;

And slowly fading, one by one,

Cliff, cloud, ravine, and mountain pass

Grew darker still, and yet more dun,

’Till deep’ning to a shadowy mass,

They seemed to mingle, earth and sky,

In one wild, weird-like canopy.

Yet lo! that hunter starts, and one

Whom it were heaven to gaze upon,

A beauteous girl,—as ’twere a fawn,

So playful, wild, and gentle too,—

Came bounding o’er the shadowy lawn,

With step as light, and love as true.

It was Echucha! she, his bride,

Dearer than all of earth beside,—

For she had left her sire’s far home,

The woodland depths with him to roam

Who was that sire’s embittered foe!

And there, in loveliness alone,

With him her opening beauty shone.

But even while he gazed, that form,

As fades the lightning in the storm,

Passed quickly from his sight.

He looked again, no one was there,

No voice was on the stilly air,

No step upon the greensward fair,

But all around was night.

She past, but thro’ that hunter’s mind,

What wild’ring memories are rushing,

As harps, beneath a summer wind,

With wild, mysterious lays are gushing.

Fast came rememb’rance of that eve,

Whose first wild throb of earthly bliss

Was but to gaze, and to receive

The boon of hope so vast as this—

To clasp that being as his own,

To win her from her native bowers;

And form a spirit-land, alone

With her amid perennial flowers.

And as he thought, that dark, deep eye,

Seemed hovering as ’twas wont to bless,

When the soft hand would on him lie,

And sooth his soul to happiness.

Like the far-off stream, in its murmurings low,

Like the first warm breath of spring,

Like the Wickolis in its plaintive flow,

Or the ring-dove’s fluttering wing,

Came swelling along the balmy air,

As if a spirit itself was there,

So sweet, so soft, so rich a strain,

It might not bless the ear again,

Now breathed afar, now swelling near,

It gushed on the enraptured ear;—

And hark! was it her well-known tone?

No—naught is heard but the voice alone.

“Warrior of the Lenape race,

Thou of the oak that cannot bend,

Of noble brow and stately grace,

And agile step, of the Tamenend,

Arise—come thou with me!

Echucha waits in silent glade,

Her eyes the eagle’s gaze assume,

As daylight’s golden glories fade,

To catch afar her hunter’s plume,—

But naught, naught can she see.

Her hair is decked with ocean shell,

The vermeil bright is on her brow,

The peag zone enclasps her well,

Her heart is sad beneath it now,

She weeps, and weeps for thee.

With early dawn thou hiedst away,

In reckless sports the hours to while,

Oh! sweet as flowers, in moonlit ray,

Shall be thy look, thy voice, thy smile,

When again she looks on thee!

Oh! come, come then with me.”

Scarce ceased the strain, when silence deep,

As broods o’er an unbroken sleep,

Seemed hovering round; then slowly came

A glow athwart the darkling night,

Bursting at length to mid-day flame,

And bathing hill and vale in light.

While suddenly a form flits by

With step as fleet, as through the sky

The morning songster skims along

Preceded by his matchless song.

So glided she; yet not unseen

Her graceful gait, her brow serene,

Her finely modelled limbs so round,

Her raven tresses all unbound,

That flashing out, and hidden now,

Waved darkly on each snowy shoulder,—

As springing from the mountain’s brow,

Eager and wild that one to know,

The hunter hurried to behold her.

On, on the beauteous phantom glides

Beneath the sombre, giant pines

That stud the steep and rugged sides

Of pendant cliffs, and deep ravines;

Down many a wild descent and dell

O’ergrown with twisted lichens rude;

Yet where she passed a halo fell

To guide the footsteps that pursued,—

Like that fell wonder of the sky

That flashes o’er the starry space,

And leaves its glitt’ring wake on high,

For man portentous truths to trace.

And onward, onward still that light

Was all which beamed upon the sight.

Of figure he could naught descry,

Invisible it seemed to fly;

Alluring on with magic art

That half disclosing, hid in part.

Bright, beautiful, resistless Fate!

Oh! what is like thy magic will,

Which men in blind obedience wait,

Yet deem themselves unfettered still!

By thee impelled that hunter sped

Through shadowy wood, o’er flowery bed;

When angels else, beneath his eye,

Had passed unseen, unnoticed by.

The Indian brave! that stoic wild,

Philosophy’s untutored child,

A being, such as wisdom’s torch

Enkindled ’neath the attic porch,

Where the Phoenician stern and eld,

His wise man^[2] to the world revealing,

Divined not western wildness held

Untutored ones less swayed by feeling;

Whose firm endurance fire nor stake

Nor torture’s fiercest pangs might shake.

Yes! matter, mind, the eternal whole,

In apprehension revelling free,

Evolved that fearlessness of soul

Which Greece^[3] saw but in theory.

Still on that beauteous phantom fled,

And still behind the hunter sped.

Nor turned she ’till where many a rock

Lay rent as by an earthquake’s shock,

And through the midst a stream its way

Held on ’mid showers of falling spray,

Marking by one long line of foam

Its passage from its mountain home.

But now, amid the light mist glancing

Like elf or water-nymph, the maid

With ravishment of form entrancing

The spell-bound gazer, stood displayed.

So looked that Grecian maiden’s face,

So every grace and movement shone,

When ’neath the sculptor’s wild embrace,

Life, love, and rapture flushed from stone.

She paused, as if her path to trace

Through the thick mist that boiled on high,

Then turning full her unseen face,

There, there, the same, that lustrous eye,

So fawn-like in its glance and hue

As when he first had met its ray,

Echucha’s self, revealed to view—

She smiled, and shadowy sank away.

Again ’twas dawn: that hunter’s gaze

Was wand’ring o’er a wide expanse

Of inland lake, half hid in haze

That waved beneath the morning’s glance.

The circling wood, so still and deep

Its sombre hush, seemed yet asleep;

Save when at intervals from tree

A lone bird woke its minstrelsy,

Or flitting off from spray to spray

’Mid glittering dew pursued its way.

When lo! upon the list’ning ear

The rustling of a distant tread,

That pausing oft drew ever near

A causeless apprehension spread.

And from a nook, a snow-white Hind

Came bounding—beauteous of its kind!—

Seeking the silver pebbled strand

Within the tide her feet to lave,

E’re noonday’s sun should wave his wand

Of fire across the burnished wave.

Never hath mortal eye e’er seen

Such fair proportion blent with grace;

A creature with so sweet a mien

Might only find its flitting place

In that bright land far, far away

Where Indian hunters, legends say,

Pursue the all-enduring chase.

The beautifully tapered head,

The slender ear, the eye so bright,

The curving neck, the agile tread,

The strength, the eloquence, the flight

Of limbs tenuitively small,

Seemed imaged forth, a thing of light

Springing at Nature’s magic call.

The sparkling surge broke at her feet,

Rippling upon the pebbly brink,

As gracefully its waters sweet

She curved her glossy neck to drink.

Yet scarce she tasted, ere she gazed

Wildly around like one amazed,

With head erect, and eye of fear,

And trembling, quick-extended ear.

Still as the serpent’s hushed advance,

The hunter, with unmoving glance,

Wound on to where a beech-tree lay

Half buried in the snowy sand:

He crouches ’neath its sapless spray

To nerve his never-failing hand.

A whiz—a start—her rolling eye

Hath caught the danger lurking nigh.

She flies, but only for a space;

Then turns with sad reproachful face;

Then rallying forth her wonted strength,

She backward threw her matchless head,

Flung on the wind her tap’ring length,

And onward swift and swifter sped,—

O’er sward, and plain, and snowy strand,

By mossy rocks, through forests grand,

Which there for centuries had stood

Rustling in their wild solitude.

On, on, in that unwearied chase

With tireless speed imbued,

Went sweeping with an eldrich pace

Pursuing and pursued!

’Till, as the sinking orb of day,

Glowed brighter with each dying ray,

The fleetness of that form was lost,

Dark drops of blood her pathway crost,

And faint and fainter drooped that head,—

She falters—sinks—one effort more—

’Tis vain—her noontide strength has fled—

She falls upon the shore.

One eager bound—the Hunter’s knife

Sank deep to end her struggling life;

Yet, e’en as flashed the murd’rous blade,

There came a shrill and plaintive cry:

The Hind was not—a beauteous maid

Lay gasping with upbraiding eye.

The glossy head and neck were gone,

The snowy furs that clasped her round;

And in their place the peag zone,

And raven hair that all unbound

Upon her heaving bosom lies

And mingles with the rushing gore,

The sandaled foot, the fawn-like eyes;

All, all are there—he needs no more—

“Echucha—ha!” The dream hath passed;

Cold clammy drops were thick and fast

Upon the awakened warrior’s brow,

And the wild eye that flashed around

To penetrate the dark profound,

Seemed fired with Frenzy’s glow.

Yet all was still, while far above,

Nestling in calm and holy love,

The watchful stars intensely bright

Gleamed meekly through the moonless night.

The Hunter gazed,—and from his brow

Passed slowly off that fevered glow,

For what the troubled soul can bless

Like such a scene of loveliness?

He raised his quiver from his side,

And downward with his antlered prey,

To meet his lone Ojibway bride,

He gaily took his joyous way.

A. F. H.