Burial Of The Minnisink

On sunny slope and beechen swell,     The shadowed light of evening fell;     And, where the maple's leaf was brown,     With soft and silent lapse came down,     The glory, that the wood receives,     At sunset, in its golden leaves.     Far upward in the mellow light     Rose the blue hills.    One cloud of white,     Around a far uplifted cone,     In the warm blush of evening shone;     An image of the silver lakes,     By which the Indian's soul awakes.     But soon a funeral hymn was heard     Where the soft breath of evening stirred     The tall, gray forest; and a band     Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,     Came winding down beside the wave,     To lay the red chief in his grave.     They sang, that by his native bowers     He stood, in the last moon of flowers,     And thirty snows had not yet shed     Their glory on the warrior's head;     But, as the summer fruit decays,     So died he in those naked days.     A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin     Covered the warrior, and within     Its heavy folds the weapons, made     For the hard toils of war, were laid;     The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,     And the broad belt of shells and beads.     Before, a dark-haired virgin train     Chanted the death dirge of the slain;     Behind, the long procession came     Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,     With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,     Leading the war-horse of their chief.     Stripped of his proud and martial dress,     Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,     With darting eye, and nostril spread,     And heavy and impatient tread,     He came; and oft that eye so proud     Asked for his rider in the crowd.     They buried the dark chief; they freed     Beside the grave his battle steed;     And swift an arrow cleaved its way     To his stern heart!    One piercing neigh     Arose, and, on the dead man's plain,     The rider grasps his steed again.