pestilence which followed in their train, the arrival of the Pilgrims, their suppliance and humility in weakness, the generous hospitality which made them strong, or the kind forbearance which permitted them to become so at the hazard of its noble authors, the strength which warmed into life their injustice, their continual and never ending encroachments upon-or artful appropriations of Indian lands, incited by avarice and assisted by superior knowledge; their gradual usurpation of power over the persons and liberties of independent nations,-with no pretext but religion, with no authority but the charter of a king beyond an ocean three thousand miles in extent, to whom these men owed nothing, of whom they had received nothing, wanted nothing and knew nothing but through the delusive tales of his grasping subjects; the formation of treaties not understood, entered into under compulsion, and for the sole benefit of their contrivers, their arbitrary exactions under them and severe inflictions for their non-fulfilment by the Indians, their own unscrupulous violation of them, the extinction of a whole people, prefaced by the slaughter of their chiefs and the usurpation of their soil, the assumption of a wasting and harassing supremacy over the Narra ganset Sachems, in return for the most generous offices, the murder of the noble Myantonomy for sheltering a fugitive from their persecution, the last days of his aged uncle, Canonicus, descending to the grave amidst his own and his people's fears, their unvarying injustice to his successors, their distinguishing favor to, open encouragement or secret abetting and support of their butcher, Uncas, the treatment of good Massassoit, Philip's father, the exasperating to madness and death, Alexander, Philip's brother; or turning to the present and future, see Philip surrounded by living and suppliant memorials of English cruelty appealing to every sympathy that could stir a generous bosom ; the English, in spite of his remonstrance, still infusing into his people a taste for ostentation and cajoling them by traffic when force could find no pretext ; himself, in possession of comparatively a barren sceptre, the fruit of English friendship-fenced in already, and the whites still urging him, when shy, to further traffic, the fiery circle of civilization daily girting more closely its writhing victim! And he, alas, an object of hatred for his knowledge of the past, of jealousy, for the domain he still possessed, of suspicion, for the resources his genius could still command, and the multiplied powerful motives which they had given him to put them all in requisition. See this hatred, unable to repress itself, provoking him to pursue with uplifted tomahawk into the midst of the whites, one who under their favor had dared to offer him the greatest of Indian insults, that of jeeringly recalling the name of his deceased ancestor. See this jealousy with avarice combined, forever busy in curtailing his estate, and this suspicion dogging his footsteps, and finally disarming him and his men, and declaring forfeit the weapons which their own cupidity had furnished, at a time when Indian arms had been generally disused for forty years, when the Indian chase grounds had been greatly circumscribed or mostly appropriated by the English, and one of the chief resources of Indian subsistence had in a great measure disappeared, and the attainment of what remained had been made more difficult, if not impossible, by the use of former methods of capture, in consequence of the rapidly progressing strides of the whites. Imagine Philip upon Mount Hope, revolving these things, with every billow associating some new image of grief, and calling to imagination those happier days of his ancestors when they roamed undisturbed over their wide domain and breathing every where the air of freedom, chased into toil with lusty sinew the savage inhabitant of the forest, or luxuriously reposing upon the sunny rock waited the capture of their rich repast from those yet unmolested waters. ELEGY. BY ANNE C. LYNCH. THERE was no bell to peal thy funeral dirge, Alone, "unknelled, uncoffined," thou hast died, Down the deep waters thou unseen didst glide, Thou sleepst not with thy fathers. O'er thy bed, Is the dark, boundless deep, whose waters lave A circling ripple, then with foaming crest The booming waves rolled on, o'er their unconscious guest. 'Tis said, that far beneath the wild waves rushing, Where sea flowers bloom and fabled Peris dwell, That there the restless waters cease their gushing, And leave their dead within some sparkling cell, Where gems are gleaming, and the lone sea shell Is breathing its sweet music. And 't is said That Time, who weaveth over earth a spell Of blight and ruin, o'er the Ocean's dead He passeth lightly on, with trackless, silent tread. Then, though no marble e'er shall rise for thee, That age shall ne'er destroy; and there shall bloom Shall throng around thy couch, and hymn a requiem there. Now fare thee well! I will not weep that thou Around thee, and with sly insidious art Had maddened thee. Then sounded loud the knell Of all thy bright young dreams. My earliest friend, farewell! |