WESTERN STATES.

NIGHT

Arkansas, the River.

NIGHT ON THE ARKANSAS.

[IGHT comes upon the Arkansas, with long stride. Its dark and turbid waters roll along,

Bearing wrecked trees and drift, deep, red, and wide; The heavy forest sleeps on either side,

To the water's edge low-stooping; and among
The patient stars the moon her lamp has hung,
Fed with the spirit of the buried sun.

No blue waves dance the stream's dark mass upon,
Glittering like Beauty's sparkling, starry tears;
No crest of foam, crowning the river dun,
Its misty ridge of frozen light uprears;
One sole relief in the great void appears:
A dark blue ridge, set sharp against the sky,
Beyond the forest's utmost boundary.

*

Albert Pike.

A PICTURE.

NATURDAY night: the sun is going down;

SATUR

The purple light glows on the river's breast, Far in the east the dull clouds watch and frown, Jealous of all the glory in the west;

The listless trees lean out along the shore

To watch their shadows lengthen down the tide; And, far above us, slowly floating o'er,

The weary birds on homeward pinions glide.

The steamer, on the sand-bar fast asleep,

Tired with the week's long labor, heavily lies; Longer and longer still the shadows creep,

And evening mists from out the distance rise.

All things in peace and patience seem to wait, As if in faith that, when the morning came, The sun would once more light his golden gate With all the glory of his entering flame.

William Osborn Stoddard.

THE RIVER'S LESSON.

UNDER the canopied bank we lie,

And the muddy river is rushing by, Yellow and foul from its eddying stray Through a thousand miles of wandering way, Gross and turbid; - and yet, I know

That this same troubled and mingled flow
Shall one day clear as the crystal be,
After it dies in the deep, far sea.

I have watched it long, with an aching brow,
Bending above it, and wonder now

If the river, so full of grime and strife,
May not be an emblem of human life,

And if many a soul that has wandered and toiled,
All corrupted and gross and soiled,

At the end may not calmly glide
Into that last great swallowing tide,
And clear and pure as the crystal be,
After it dies in that deep, far sea.

William Osborn Stoddard.

Big Horn, the River, Montana Ter.

THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE.

N that desolate land and lone

IN

Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone

Roar down their mountain path,

By their fires the Sioux chiefs

Muttered their woes and griefs,

And the menace of their wrath.

Revenge!

cried Rain-in-the-Face;

Revenge upon all the race

Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"

And the mountains dark and high From their crags re-echoed the cry Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and river-side
The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing of the stream
And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war-paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,

In ambush the Sitting Bull Lay with three thousand braves Crouched in the clefts and caves, Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare

The White Chief with yellow hair, And his three hundred men, Dashed headlong, sword in hand; But of that gallant band

Not one returned again.

The sudden darkness of death Overwhelmed them, like the breath

And smoke of a furnace of fire; By the river's bank, and between The rocks of the ravine,

They lay in their bloody attire.

But the foemen fled in the night,
And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight,
Uplifted high in air,

As a ghastly trophy, bore

The brave heart that beat no more
Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,

With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
In the Year of a Hundred Years!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

CUSTER.

HAT! shall that sudden blade

WHAT! Leap out no more?

No more thy hand be laid
Upon the sword-hilt, smiting sore?
O for another such

The charger's rein to clutch,
One equal voice to summon victory,
Sounding thy battle-cry,

Brave darling of the soldiers' choice!
Would there were one more voice!

O gallant charge, too bold!

O fierce, imperious greed

To pierce the clouds that in their darkness hold