Gladdening the first approach of day,
Like blithe birds with their matin lay,

And making all rejoice.
The hours pursue their ceaseless round,
Uncheered by any sight or sound

Of what has given such joy ;
No plaything wheeling o'er the floor,
No summons now to ope the door

For the heart-stealing boy.

And when the evening twilight falls,
How wide and silent seem those walls,

Where rang his heartfelt glee !
How flew his tiny feet about !
How gaily rose his frequent shout,

The spirit's revelry!
And when tired feet no more could run,
And songs and stories were all done,

Which had the hour beguiled,
Then came the kind, “ good night, my friends!”
While for the parting kiss each bends,

We bless the lovely child.
Gone in his beauty -- like the star
Which beams before day's glorious car,

Then sinks in that full light;
Still shining on in its own sphere,
And still to us as truly near,

Although withdrawn from sight.

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.*

Shall not one line lament that lion race,
For us struck out from sweet creation's face ?
Alas, alas, for them !- those fated bands,
Whose monarch tread was on these broad, green

lands! Our fathers called them savage — them, whose

bread, In the dark hour, these famished fathers fed.

We call them savage

O be just !
Their outraged feelings scan ;
A voice comes forth, 'tis from the dust ;-

The savage was a man !
Think

ye he loved not? Who stood by,
And in his toils took part ?
Woman was there to bless his eye ;-

The savage had a heart !
Think ye he prayed not ? When on high

He heard the thunder roll,
What bade him look beyond the sky ?

had a soul !

The savage

Beneath the pillared dome,
We seek our God in prayer ;
Through boundless woods he loved to roam,
And the Great Spirit worshipped there.

He saw the cloud, ordained to grow,
And burst upon his hills in woe;
He saw his people withering by,

Beneath the invader's evil eye ;
Strange feet were trampling on his father's bones,

At midnight hour he woke to gaze

Upon his happy cabin's blaze,
And listen to his children's dying groans.

He saw-and maddening at the sight,
Gave his bold bosom to the fight;
To tiger rage his soul was driven ;
Mercy was not-nor sought nor given;
The pale man from his lands must fly;
He would be free-or he would die.

Alas for them their day is o’er,
Their fires are out from hill and shore;
No more for them the wild deer bounds;
The plough is on their hunting grounds;
The pale man's axe rings through their woods,
The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods,

Their pleasant springs are dry;
Their children-look, by power oppressed,
Beyond the mountains of the west,

Their children go-to die.

O doubly lost! oblivion's shadows close

Around their triumphs and their woes ; For the doomed Indian leaves behind no trace, To save his own, or serve another race ;

With his frail breath his power has passed away, His deeds, his thoughts, are buried with his clay.

Nor lofty pile, nor glowing page

Shall link him to a future age,
Or give him with the past a rank;
His heraldry is but a broken bow,
His history but a tale of wrong and woe ;
His very name must be a blank.

SPRAGUE.

а

Not many generations ago,

where

you now sit, circled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and the helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and the daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here ; and, when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of

a

peace. Here too they worshipped ; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but He had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lowly dwelling, in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne ;- in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze, in the lofty pine that had defied a thousand whirlwinds ;-in the timid warbler that never left its native grove, in the fearless eagle whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his foot, and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious Source he bent in humble, though blind adoration.

And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you, the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dy