SETTLEMENT OF THE GENESEE.

———

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

———

Let Ruin lift his arm, and crush in dust

The glittering piles and palaces of kings,

And, changing crown and sceptre into rust,

Doom them to sleep among forgotten things!⁠—

Let Time o’ershadow with his dusky wings,

Warriors who guilty eminence have gained,

And drank renown at red, polluted springs⁠—

Sacked peaceful towns—the holy shrine profaned

And to their chariot-wheels the groaning captive chained!

But the self-exiled Britons, who behind

Left Transatlantic luxuries, and gave

Their parting salutations to the wind,

And, scorning the vile languor of the slave,

Rocked with the little May Flower on the wave,

To immortality have prouder claim:

Let the bright Muse of History engrave

Their names in fadeless characters of flame,

And give their wondrous tale an everlasting fame!

No empty vision of unbounded power⁠—

No dream of wild romance—no thirst for gold,

Lured them from merry England’s hall and bower⁠—

Her Sabbath chime of bells, her hamlet old;

At home religious bigotry controlled

The struggling wing of thought; a gloomy cloud,

Charged with despotic wrath, above them rolled;

And haunts they sought where man might walk unbowed,

And sacred Truth might raise her warning voice aloud.

No waving flag, gay plume or gleaming casque

Proclaimed them masters of war’s bloody trade;

Less daring spirits from the mighty task

In terror would have shrunken: tender maid,

And daughter gently reared, for God to aid

Their feeble natures, breathed the words of prayer,

And in Heaven’s panoply their soul’s arrayed⁠—

Speeding the good work on, though frail and fair,

When sterner manhood felt the faintness of despair.

Old Sparta in exulting tones may boast,

Of ancient matrons who could deck the bier

Of sire and husband, slain where host met host,

And, in the flush of pride, forget the tear:

Our pilgrim mothers, too, could conquer fear,

And stifle sorrow; but their hearts enshrined

The soft affections: Who loves not to hear

Their praises sung?—their constancy of mind,

Amid thy daughters’ Greece, we strive in vain to find!

White lay the snow flakes on the lonely shore,

And Winter flung his banner on the blast⁠—

Behind swept angry waters, and before

Spread waving woods, dark, limitless and vast,

When a new continent received at last

Our houseless sires. The red man, gaunt and grim,

On the strange scene his falcon vision cast;

And nameless terror shook his tawny limb

While, drowning ocean’s roar, went up their triumph-hymn;

And when the bold survivors of the band

Reached the decaying autumn-time of life,

And locks were white, and palsied was the hand,

Barbaric swarms, with axe and deadly knife,

And painted, plumed, and quivered for the strife,

Rushed from their trackless lairs to burn—despoil⁠—

Butcher the cradled babe, the pleading wife;

Then swept the nodding harvest from the soil,

And scattered on the wind the fruits of patient toil.

When the green, shrouding moss of time o’ercrept

Mounds in the vale and on the mountain-side,

Where the stern founders of our empire slept,

Improvement, moving with gigantic stride,

Still hurried onward:—patient Labor plied

The ringing axe; and from his old domain

Fled drowsy Solitude; while far and wide

The scene grew bright with fields of golden grain,

And orchards robed in bloom on hill and sunny plain.

The wand of Enterprise to queenly states

Gave wondrous being; rivaling the spell

That reared round Thebes a wall of many gates

When proud Amphion^[A] swept his chorded shell,

The tuneful gift of Hermes: pastoral bell,

With tinkling murmurs, woke savannahs green,

And roused wild echoes in the woody dell,

Where late the cougar, of terrific mien,

Devoured the fawn, or rocked upon his perch unseen.

With his penates, to the distant shores

Of our broad western streams, Adventure hied,

And pierced the soil for rich metallic ores,

Or, with a keen, prophetic vision, spied

An unborn mart upon the river-side;

While Traffic trimmed her bark to brave the gale,

And meet the terrors of a chartless tide⁠—

In nameless havens furled her tattered sail,

Or toward Pacific seas, pursued the red man’s trail.

The buskined lords of bow and leathern quiver

Were thy admiring sponsors long ago,

And named thee “Genesee,” my native river,(1)

For pleasant are thy waters in their flow!

Though on thy sides no bowers of orange grow,

The free and happy in thy valley throng,

O’er which the airs of health delight to blow⁠—

No richer, brighter charms than thine belong

To streams immortal made by proud Homeric song.

Although thy tide that winds through pastures now,

By fleecy flock and lowing kine is drank,

A river of the wilderness wert thou,

When mixed in deadly combat on thy bank

The yelling Savage and impetuous Frank:^[B]

Thy wave lifts up no murmuring voice to tell

Where the red, bubbling stream of carnage sank,

When rattling gun, loud groan and fiendish yell

Thy hollow murmur drowned, and gasping valor fell:

And Nature, in the moss of time attired,

On her green throne of forest sat, when came

The host of Sullivan, with vengeance fired,

To rouse upon thy shore the beast of game,

And wrap the lodges of fierce tribes in flame,

Fresh from unhappy Wyoming, and red

With scalps of hoary age and childless dame:

Gone from thy borders are the oaks that spread

Their yellow, autumn palls above the martial dead.

Eastward the soldiers of that campaign bore

Glad tidings of unpruned but pleasant lands,

Washed by thy surges, like those spies of yore

Who brought ripe grapes from Eschol to the bands

By Moses led across the desert sands.

Regardless of the sons of Anak, soon

Bold men, of dauntless hearts and iron hands,

Left home, while life was in its active noon,

To hear the forest wind thy flood’s deep voice attune.

They fled not, like scourged vassals in the night,

From dungeon, rack and chain, with footstep fleet:

The halls of their nativity were bright,

And fraught with recollections, fond and sweet,

Of childish hours; and hearts that loved them beat

Beneath their pleasant roofs: forsaking all⁠—

They roused the wood-wolf from his dim retreat,

And boldly reared the gloomy cabin wall

Of rude, misshapen logs, amid the forest tall.

They little thought, while roving near the site

Of thy proud city,^[C] deafened by the sound

Of waters tumbling from a fearful height,

And darkened by the wilderness around,

That soon its hollow roaring would be drowned,

By the deep murmur of the mighty crowd,

Amid thick domes, with tower and turret crowned;

The din of whirling cars, and clatter loud

Of mills by human art with iron lungs endowed:

Nor did they dream that, in communion grand,

Broad Erie’s wave, and Hudson’s mighty tide,

Within a channel shaped by mortal hand,

Ere half a century elapsed, would glide:

That soon fair Buffalo, in queenly pride,

Would spring the Carthage of our inland seas,

And wave her sceptre o’er the waters wide⁠—

To shipping change the patriarchal trees,

And launch a thousand barks to battle with the breeze.

The foreign tourist gazing on thy vale,

By rural seat and stately mansion graced,

Stands mute with wonder when he hears the tale

Of thy redemption from the sylvan waste:

That only fifty years their rounds have traced

Since Phelps, the Cecrops of thy realm(2) forsook

The peopled haunts of Genius, Art and Taste,

While doubting friends with apprehension shook,

And love upon his form fixed sad, regretful look.

On the broad green acclivities that round

The lovely lake of Canandaigua rise,

The groves in deep, majestic grandeur frowned,

Hiding their gloomy secrets from the skies,

And scarred and worn by storms of centuries,

When painted hordes, with streaming locks of jet,

Terrific garb, and wildly glancing eyes,

Him and his daring band in treaty met

Though late with Christian gore the tomahawk was wet.

A magic mirror girt by emerald,

In shade embowered, the diamond waters lay;

While the proud eagle, king-like, fierce and bald,

Throned on the blasted hemlock, eyed his prey:

Sweet wild-flowers, guarded from the blaze of day,

Delicious odor on the soft air flung;

And birds of varied note and plumage gay

On shrubs and vines, with ripening berries hung,

Folded their glittering wings, and amorously sung.

The water-rat and darting otter swam

Amid the reedy flags that fringed the shore;

And the brown beaver to his rounded dam,

With patient toil, the tooth-hewn sappling bore:

The lonely heron, surfeited with gore.

Smoothed on the pebbly beech his plumage dank:

Earth, sky and wave an air of wildness wore,

And nimbly down the green and sloping bank

Came stag and timid hind, on silver hoof and drank.

The pen of voiceful narrative may well

That solemn congress in the forest call

A thrilling and romantic spectacle:

The trunks of oaken monarchs, huge and tall,

Were the rough columns of their council hall;

Thick boughs were interwoven overhead,

And winds made music with their leafy pall:

Below a tangled sea of brushwood spread,

Through which, to far-off wild, the beaten war-path led.

Few were the whites in number, and about

The council-fire were gathered dusky throngs,

From whose dark bosoms time had not washed out

The bitter memory of recent wrongs.

Some longed to wake their ancient battle-songs,

And on the reeking spoils of conflict gaze⁠—

Bind the pale captive to the stake with thongs,

And hellish yells of exultation raise,

While shriveled up his form, and blackened in the blaze.

The compact for a cession of their land

Was nearly ended, when a far-famed chief

Rose with the lofty bearing of command,

Though lip and brow denoted inward grief:

Nought broke the silence save the rustling leaf,

And the low murmur of the lulling wave;

He drew his blanket round him, and a brief,

But proud description of his fathers gave,

Then spoke of perished tribes, and glory in the grave.

“And who be ye?” he said, in scornful tones,

And glance of kindling hate—“Who offer gold

For hunting-grounds made holy by the bones

Of our great seers and sagamores of old?

Men who would leave our hearths and altars cold⁠—

Unstring the bow, and break the hunting-spear⁠—

Our pleasant huts with sheeted flame infold,

Then drive our starving, wailing race in fear

Beyond the western hills, like broken herds of deer.

“Wake, On-gue-hon-we!^[D] Strike the pointed-post,

And gather quickly for the conflict dire;

You Long-knives are forerunners of a host,

Thick as the sparks when prairies are on fire;

Let childhood grasp the weapon of his sire⁠—

Arm, arm for deadly struggle, one and all

While wives and babes to secret haunts retire:

The ghosts of buried fathers on ye call

To guard their ancient tombs from sacrilege or fall!”

Dark forms rose up, and brows began to lower,

While many a savage eye destruction glared;

But one came forth in that portentous hour,

Ere shaft was aimed, or dagger fully bared,

And hushed the storm. Old Houneyawus dared

His voice upraise; and by his friendly aid

The knife was sheathed—the pioneer was spared;

Above that humane warrior of the shade

Let marble tell the tale in lines that cannot fade.

All hail our early settlers! though with storm

Their sky of being was obscured and black,

And Peril, in his most appalling form,

Opposed their rugged march, and warned them back:

They faltered not, or fainted in the track

That led to empire; but with patience bore

Cold, parching thirst, and fever’s dread attack;

While ancient Twilight, to return no more,

From far Otsego fled to Erie’s rock-bound shore.

They toiled, though Hunger with his wasted mien,

Stalked through their infant settlements, and night

Lured from the gloomy cavern, gaunt and lean,

Droves of disturbing wolves, that hated light,

Some wan and trembling mourner to affright

With their dismaying howls, around the place

Where coldly still, and newly hid from sight,

Earth folded loved ones in her damp embrace,

Without recording tomb their forest mounds to grace.

From clearing rude, and dismal swamp undrained,

Fumes of decaying vegetation rose;

While the fell genius of distemper reigned,

And filled the newly-opening realm with woes;

Brave manhood smiting—though his lusty blows

Tall ranks of warrior oaks in dust had bowed,

And robbing widowed beauty of her rose,

Or weaving, while the voice of wail was loud,

Round childhood, early lost, the drapery of the shroud.

Born in the lap of plenty and of wealth,

Mindless, too oft, are children of the sire

Who purchased at the fearful price of health,

And even life, their heritage. The lyre

Should call forth music from its proudest wire

In praise of men who brave, to bless their kind,

Tempest, the sword, foul pestilence and fire;

Their names in grateful hearts should be enshrined,

When crumbled are their bones—their ashes on the wind:

And those who left the venerated breast,

And soil of proud New England, to reclaim

Our smiling El Dorado of the West

From centuries of gloom, and haunts of game

Change to Arcadian lovelines, and tame

The virgin rudeness of the shaded mould,

Should not be unremembered:—on the same

Eternal page where Fame, in lines of gold,

Hath pilgrim virtue traced, their names should be enrolled.