IV.

Yet earnestly the pious man bcsought,

That Heaven would deign to shed the Gospel light On the kind pagan's soul, as yet untaught

Save in the dreams of her primordial night; And much he prayed, that to the truth when brought,

Cleansed of his sins in garments pure and white, He might subdue the fierceness of his clan, And gain man refuge from intolerant man.

V.

Williams the task of goodness now essayed,

To win the wanderer to a worship new; The utter darkness that his soul arrayed,

Concealed her workings from our Founder's view, Save when some question, rare and strange, betrayed

His dream-bewildered glimpses of the true.Long was the task ; and Williams back began, At earth's creation and the fall of man.

VI.

He told how God from nothing formed the earth,

And gave each creature shape surpassing fair ; How He in Eden, at their happy birth,

Placed with His blessing the first human pair ;
How, disobeying, they were driven forth,

And they, and theirs, consigned to sad despair,
Until, incarnate, God in pity gave
Himself for man, and made it just to save.

VII.

He then told how the blessed martyrs bore

The chains of dungeons, and the fagot's flame, Glad that their sufferings might attest the more

Their perfect faith in their Redeemer's name;

How His disciples past from shore to shore,

Salvation's joyful tidings to proclaim ;
How hither now they brought the Gospel's light
To cheer the red men wrapt in pagan night,

VIII.

Waban attentive listened to the strain,

And at its close for long in silence sate; His visage did a graver cast attain

And all his heart's deep feelings indicate. At length he uttered thus the mental train:

“Weak is my soul, and dark is her estate! No book has she to tell of Manit high, Except this outstretched earth and starry sky.

IX.

“Great news Awanux brings the red men here

News that their legends old doth much excel ; Yet give to Waban the attentive ear,

And the traditions of his sires he'll tell. From days afar, down many a rolling year

Down to thy brothers red - their fathers' tale Comes to inform them, in their mortal state, What powers they should revere - what deprecate."

X.

Here Waban paused, and sitting mused a space,

As pondering gravely on the mighty theme; Deep thought was graven on his earnest face,

And still his groping memory did seem
To gather up the legends of his race.

At length he roused, as from a passing dream,
And from his mat, majestically slow
Rearing his form, began in accents low :

XI.

. far away,

Brother, that time is distant

When Heaven or Earth or living thing was not, Save our great God, Cawtantowit, who lay

Extended through immensity, where naught
But shoreless waters were-

-and dead were they ;
No living thing did on their bosom float,
And silentness the boundless space did fill ;
For the Great Spirit slept--and all was still.

XII,

“But though he slept, yet, as the human soul

To this small frame, his being did pervade The universal space, and ruled the whole;

E'en as the soul, when in deep slumber laid, Doth her wild dreams and fantasies control,

And give them action, color, shape and shade Just as she wills. But the Great Spirit broke His sleep at last, and all the boundless shook.

XIII.

“In a vast eagle's form embodied, He

Did o'er the deep on outstretched pinions spring; Fire in his eye lit all immensity,

Whilst his majestically gliding wing
Trembled hoarse thunders to the shuddering sea ;

And, through their utmost limit quivering,
The conscious waters felt their Manittoo,
And life, at once, their deepest regions knew.

XIV.

“The moutain whale came spouting from below,

The porpoise plunged along the foaming main, The smaller fry in sporting myriads go,

With glancing backs above the liquid plain;

Yet still refused her giant form to show

Ay, sullenly below did yet remain Earth-bearing Tortoise, the Unamis vast, And o'er her still the loftly billows past.

XV.

“ Then great Cawtantowit in his anger spoke,

And from his flaming eyes the lightnings past, And from his wings the tenfold thunders broke.

The sullen Tortoise heard his words at last And slowly she her rocky grasp forsook,

And her huge back of woods and mountains vast From the far depths tow'rd upper light began Slowly to heave.—The affrighted waters ran

XVI.

“Hither and thither, tumultous and far;

But still Unamis, heaving from below The full formed earth, first, through the waves did rear

The fast sky-climbing Alleghany's brow,
Dark, huge and craggy; from its summits bare

The rolling billows fell, and rising now,
All its broad forest to the breezy air
Came out of Ocean, and, from verdure fair,

XVII.

“ Shed the salt showers. Far o'er the deep,

Hills after hills still lift their clustered trees, Wild down the rising slopes the waters leap,

Then from the up-surging plain the ocean flees, Till lifted from the flood, in vale and steep

And rock, and forest waving to the breeze, Earth, on the Tortoise borne, frowned ocean o'er, And spurned the billows from her thundering shore.

XVIII.

“But great Cawtantowit, on his pinions still,

O'er the lone earth majestically sprung,
And whispered to the mountain, vale and hill,

And with new life the teeming regions rung;
The feathered songsters tune their carols shrill,

Herds upon herds the plain and mountain throng; In the still pools the cunning beavers toil, And the armed seseks* their strong folds uncoil.

XIX.

“ Yet man was not. —Then great Cawtantowit spoke

To the hard mountain crags and called for man : And sculptured, breathing, from the cleaving rock,

Sprang the armed warrior, and a strife began With living things.—Hard as his native block,

Was his stone heart, and through it ran Blood cold as ice - and the Great Spirit struck This cruel man, and him to atoms broke.

XX.

“Then He the oak, of fibre hard and fine,

With the first red man's soul and form endowed, And woman made he of the tapering pine,

Which 'neath that oak in peaceful beauty bowed ; She on the red man's bosom did recline,

Like the bright rainbow on the thunder-cloud.
And the Great Spirit saw his work divine,
And on the pair let fall His smile benign.

XXI.

“He gave them all these forests far and near,

The forms that fly, and those that creeping go, The healthful fountains, and the rivers clear,

And all the broods that sport the waves below;

* Sesek-rattlesnake.