Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Death found strange beauty on that cherub brow,
And dash’d it out. – There was a tint of rose
O’er cheek and lip; – he touch’d the veins with ice,
And the rose faded. – Forth from those blue eyes
There spake a wistful tenderness, – a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence
Alone can wear. – With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of their curtaining lids
Forever. – There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,
Charming her even to tears. – The spoiler set
His seal of silence. – But there beam’d a smile,
So fix’d and holy from that marble brow, –
Death gazed and left it there; – he dared not steal
The signet-ring of Heaven.

‘How can the red men be forgotten, while so many of our states and territories, bays, lakes, and rivers, are indelibly stamped by names of their giving?’ Ye say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave;

Morn on her rosy couch awoke,
Enchantment led the hour,
And mirth and music drank the dews
That freshen’d Beauty’s flower,
Then from her bower of deep delight,
I heard a young girl sing,
‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry,
For ’tis a holy thing.’

An axe rang sharply ’mid those forest shades
Which from creation toward the skies had tower’d
In unshorn beauty. There, with vigorous arm
Wrought a bold emigrant, and by his side
His little son, with question and response,
Beguiled the toil.
‘Boy, thou hast never seen
Such glorious trees. Hark, when their giant trunks
Fall, how the firm earth groans. Rememberest thou
The mighty river, on whose breast we sail’d,
So many days, on toward the setting sun?
Our own Connecticut, compar’d to that,
Was but a creeping stream.’
‘Father, the brook
That by our door went singing, where I launch’d