RETURN AND STRIFE.

No wonder, that when Wabun passed away,

Their torpid natures should have lost the charm

That held so perfect, with its gentle sway,

Yet slacked so quickly, with the palsied arm.

Infirmities are easy to impart,

And through the generations, they come down;

But God must place his hand upon each heart,

And press each brow where he would drop a crown.

Long brotherhood of forest, storm and flood,

Had schooled them for the turbulence of life.

The wraith of Nature made them men of blood;

The war of elements, the ocean's strife,

The thunder of Niagara now heard,

The lashing of Atlantic on the beach,

The slogan of the forest — in a word

The carnival, at rife, within their reach,

All served to spur their natures into storm.

How many catch the key-note of their song

From the surrounding elements, and warm

Their frozen energies, and make them strong

In earth's unceasing alchemy! Much more

The untutored savage; he has lost the key,

And must from Nature's chalice find the door,

Through which to penetrate life's mystery.

And many generations passed away,

Since these stern foresters had dwelt apart

From their ancestral brethren; till the day

When in their higher prowess, from the heart

Of the great forest fastnesses, they spring

As panthers, on their unsuspecting prey.

They have grown strong in weaponry, yet cling

To Deity, in their untutored way.

The “happy hunting ground” to them is Heaven;

And the “Great Spirit” still to them is God;

Yet, from their hearts, all tender passions driven,

They smite their brethren with a heavy rod.

A long and ceaseless struggle, many years,

Alternately, invasion and defense,

Till they are driven southward; and the fears,

That Kohen's prophecy would be fullfilled

And back of this, the agony intense

Of impotence in prayer so deeply chilled

The hearts of these poor children of the sun,

That they gave easy conquest to their foes;

And thus the struggle stubbornly begun,

So unresisting now, was finished without blows.

When man is shorn of strength, and there is left

Only Omnipotence, we kiss the rod —

The very rod that smites us. In the cleft

We would attempt to hide from Deity,

Yet in his anger is an answered prayer —

The consciousness of presence; though we flee,

The wrath of love, is proof of constant care.

But when we beat against the empty air,

And every echo sends us back despair,

And even superstition, fails to foil

Our souls with the deceptive glow of spoil,

Then are we bittered, and our path made black;

We grope in mists, Cimmerian, on the wrack

Of constant and interminable doubt,

A natural prey, and easy put to rout.

To South, and West, they turn their fateful way

Beyond the Mississippi; and their day

Seemed lighted with a new influx of hope.

The sun embraced them with a warmer smile;

The mellow fragrance of the Southern slope

Added entrancement each succeeding mile.

Not all at once the exodus took place,

For they were many, and had scattered wide;

Yet to the southward all had set their face

To seek in other fields a place to hide

From cruel persecutions. When our kin

Lends its consanguined arder to the dart,

How more intent, with vengeful purposes,

How heavier is the load upon the heart!

They scatter into fragmentary clans,

And in the earnest of their added woe,

Give birth to new religious phantasies.

The unclogged streams of superstition flow,

When down the mountains, and across the moors,

The heavy, swollen torrents sweep along,

Throwing their scattered wrecks upon the shores,

And breaking barriers, however strong.

Baal was great, when Baalbec reared her crest

And column after column gave her grace

And all the East upon her beauty smiled;

But when the “owls and bats” usurped her place,

The god had fallen. In the temple dust,

Where man, with his immortal, had so strove

To make the marble animate ( in vain,

Like other myriad phantoms of the brain )

Time fashions into ghostly hands, that sternly point above.

And so, God reaps involuntary praise,

From every fashioning of man's design;

His ways, indeed, cannot be called our ways;

Yet his hozannas, from each crumbling shrine,

Teach us the servitude of all the past;

That human hands but fashion Heavenly aids;

That every sculptured mythmark only fades

Into eternal sunshine, at the last.

Some crossed the mountain ramparts of the West;

Some lingered still upon the Eastern slope;

The empire yet was open to their zest,

And all were buoyant with a new-born hope.

But war, like pestilence, doth warp our lives,

And like contagion, it infects the air.

Peace comes in measure, but it never thrives

Directly after conflict, till grows fair

The flesh so lately scarred. Intestine war

Made ravage of their ranks; they ill could spare

Their bravest, yet the first to fall in fratricidal jar.

The lines, by conflict, soon were closely drawn,

And from the night of struggle nations dawn,

Whose chiefs assume the King's prerogative.

Clans fall, and clansmen perish; nations live

That pass chaotic conflict, and ensphere

Their crude material, as a new-born world,

To individual phalanxes, and rear

Their rude escutcheon. As in ether whirled,

The new born planet tracks its trial course;

So must this human query find its way,

And failure is its fashion; but still worse

Are those who fail to grapple with the day,

But look supinely on while vested rights

Are trampled under foot, and raise no hand

In deprecating gesture; from the heights

Of grim impartial history will stand

Unfading letters, written to the shame

Of those whose scourges fail to make a name.