Page:Poems Cook.djvu/185

Far away and alone, where the headlong tide
 Dashes on with our bold canoe,
We ask and trust that hand to guide
 And carry us safely through.
The Great Spirit dwells in the beautiful sun,
 And while we kneel in its light,
Who will not own that the hunter one
 Has an altar pure and bright?

The painted streak on a warrior's cheek
 Appears a wondrous thing;
The white man stares at a wampum belt,
 And a plume from the heron's wing.
But the red man wins the panther's skins
 To cover his dauntless form;
While the pale-face hides his breast in a garb
 That he takes from the crawling worm.
And your lady fair, with her gems so rare,
 Her ruby, gold, and pearl,
Would be as strange to other eyes
 As the bone-deck'd Indian girl.

Then why does the cruel white man come
 With the war-whoop's yelling sound?
Oh! why does he take our wigwam home,
 And the jungled hunting-ground?
The wolf-cub has its lair of rest,
 The wild horse where to dwell,
And the Spirit who gave the bird its nest
 Made me a place as well.
Then back, go back from the red-skin's track;
 For the hunter's eyes grow dim,
To find that the white man wrongs the one
 Who never did harm to him.

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