Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/The Indian's Bride
The Indian's Bride.
Why is that graceful female hereWith yon red hunter of the deer?Of gentle mien and shape, she seems For civil halls designed,Yet with the stately savage walks, As she were of his kind.Look on her leafy diadem,Enriched with many a floral gem;Those simple ornaments about Her candid brow, discloseThe loitering springs last violet. And summer's earliest rose;But not a flower lies breathing thereSweet as herself, or half so fair.Exchanging lustre with the sun, A part of day she strays,A glancing, living, human smile On Nature's face she plays.Can none instruct me what are theseCompanions of the lofty trees?
Intent to blend her with his lot,Fate formed her all that he was not;And, as by mere unlikeness, thoughts Associate we see,Their hearts, from very difference, caught A perfect sympathy.The household goddess here to beOf that one dusky votary,She left her pallid countrymen, An earthling most divine,And sought in this sequestered wood A solitary shrine.Behold them roaming hand in hand,Like night and sleep, along the land;Observe their movements: he for her Restrains his active stride,While she assumes a bolder gait To ramble at his side;Thus, even as the steps they frame,Their souls fast alter to the same;The one forsakes ferocity, And momently grows mild;The other tempers more and more The artful with the wild.She humanizes him, and heEducates her to liberty.
Oh! say not they must soon be old,Their limbs prove faint, their breasts feel cold!Yet envy I that sylvan pair More than my words express—The simple beauty of their lot, And seeming happiness.They have not been reduced to shareThe painful pleasures of despair;Their sun declines not in the sky,Nor are their wishes cast,Like shadows of the afternoon, Repining towards the past:With nought to dread or to repent,The present yields them full content.In solitude there is no crime; Their actions all are free,And passion lends their way of life The only dignity;And how can they have any cares—Whose interest contends with theirs?
The world, for all they know of it,Is theirs; for them the stars are lit;For them the earth beneath is green, The heavens above are bright;For them the moon doth wax and wane, And decorate the night;For them the branches of those treesWave music in the vernal breeze;For them upon that dancing spray, The free bird sits and sings,And glittering insects flit about Upon delighted wings;For them that brook, the brakes among,Murmurs its small and drowsy song;For them the many-coloured clouds Their shapes diversify,And change at once, like smiles and frowns, The expression of the sky.For them, and by them, all is gay,And fresh and beautiful as they:The images their minds receive, Their minds assimilateTo outward forms, imparting thus, The glory of their state.
Could ought be painted otherwiseThan fair, seen through her starbright eyes? He, too, because she fills his sight,Each object falsely sees;The pleasure that he has in herMakes all things seem to please.And this is love;—and it is lifeThey lead, that Indian and his wife.