Battle-Ground of Denonville

Oh! what secrets are revealed
In this ancient battle-field!
Round are scattered skull and bone,
Into light by workmen thrown
Who across this valley fair
For the train a way prepare.
Pictures brighten thick and fast
On the mirror of the past;
To poetic vision plain
Plume and banner float again;
Round are mangled bodies lying,
Some at rest, and others dying —
Thus the Swan-ne-ho-ont greet
Those who plant invading feet
On the chase-ground where their sires
Long have kindled council-fires.
Fragments of the deadly brand,
Lying in the yellow sand,
With the fleur-de-lis to tell
Of the Frank who clenched it well,
When his race encountered here
Tameless chasers of the deer —
Arrow-head and hatchet-blade,
War-club broken and decayed,
Belts in part resolved to dust,
Gun-locks red with gnawing rust.
Other sounds than pick and spade,
When this valley lay in shade,
Ringing on the summer air
Scared the panther from his lair;
Other sounds than axe and bar,
Pathway building for the car,
Buzzing saw, or hammer-stroke,
Echo wild from slumber woke,
When New France her lilies pale
Here unfolded to the gale —
Rifle-crack and musket-peal,
Whiz of shaft and clash of steel —
Painted forms from cover leaping,
Crimson swaths through foemen reaping,
While replied each savage throat,
To the rallying bugle-note,
With a wolf-howl long and loud,
That the stoutest veteran cowed,
Mingled in one fearful din
Where these graves are crumbling in.
Busy actors in the fray
Were their tenants on that day;
But each name, forgotten long,
Cannot now be wove in song.
They had wives, perchance, who kept
Weary watch for them, and wept
Bitter tears at last to learn
They would never more return;
And in hut as well as hall
Childless mothers mourned their fall.
In a vain attempt they died
To bring low Na-do-wa pride,
And extend the Bourbon's reign
O'er this broad and bright domain.
When the whirlwind of the fight
Sunk into a whisper light,
Rudely opened was the mould
For their bodies stiff and cold:
Brush and leaves were loosely piled
On their grave-couch in the wild,
That their place of rest the foe,
Drunk with blood, might never know.
When the settler for his hearth,
Cleared a spot of virgin earth;
And its smoke-thread on the breeze,
Curled above the forest trees,
Nor memorial sign, nor mound
Told that this was burial ground.
Since this bank received its dead,
Now unroofed to startled sight,
With its skeleton's all white,
More than eightscore years have fled.
Gather them with pious care, —
Let them not lie mouldering there.
Crushed beneath the grinding wheel,
And the laborer's heavy heel.
Ah! this fractured skull of man
Nursed a brain once quick to plan,
And these ribs that round me lie
Hearts enclosed that once beat high.
Here they fought, and here they fell,
Battle's roar their only knell,
And the soil that drank their gore
Should embrace the brave once more.