The Indian with His Dead Child

In the silence of the midnight
I journey with my dead;
In the darkness of the forest boughs
A lonely path I tread.

But my heart is high and fearless,
As by mighty wings upborne;
The mountain eagle hath not plumes
So strong as love and scorn.

I have raised thee from the grave-sod,
By the white man’s path defiled;
On to th’ ancestral wilderness,
I bear thy dust, my child!

I have ask’d the ancient deserts
To give my dead a place,
Where the stately footsteps of the free
Alone should leave a trace.

And the tossing pines made answer--
“Go, bring us back thine own!”
And the streams from all the hunters’ hills,
Rush’d with an echoing tone.

Thou shalt rest by sounding waters
That yet untamed may roll;
The voices of that chainless host
With joy shall fill thy soul.

In the silence of the midnight
I journey with the dead,
Where the arrows of my father’s bow
Their falcon-flight have sped.

I have left the spoilers’ dwellings
For evermore behind;
Unmingled with their household sounds,
For me shall sweep the wind.

Alone, amidst their hearth-fires,
I watch’d my child’s decay,
Uncheer’d I saw the spirit-light
From his young eyes fade away.

When his head sank on my bosom,
When the death-sleep o’er him fell,
Was there one to say, “A friend is near?”
There was none!--pale race, farewell!

To the forests, to the cedars,
To the warrior and his bow,
Back, back!--I bore thee laughing thence,
I bear thee slumbering now!

I bear thee unto burial
With the mighty hunters gone;
I shall hear thee in the forest breeze,
Thou wilt speak of joy, my son!

In the silence of the midnight
I journey with the dead;
But my heart is strong, my step is fleet,
My fathers’ path I tread.