Coates Kinney (Коутс Кинни)

On an Indian's Grave

The sunset blushes of the occident
  Glow faint and fainter, and as Twilight waves
Her wizard wand athwart the firmament,
  The quick stars spring from their cerulean graves
  In pale shrouds, doubled in yon brook that laves,
With prattling lapse, the foot of this old mound,
  Where sleep, perchance, a thousand Indian braves
Their monuments these ancient trees around,
Whose leafy meshes sift the moonbeams on the ground.

This grave, from which the white man has exhumed
  Some bones of mortal buried long ago,
Mayhap was scooped here ere had Science plumed
  His starry wings to pass old ocean’s flow.
  But whose the skeleton, no one may know
Again on earth; for now remains there naught
  Of deed recorded or of name to show
That such a one e’er in life’s battle fought,
Or groveled infamous, or deathless honors sought.

Conjecture, threading through the darkling path
  Of dead years, may behold him walk the chief
Of savage warriors, in his wild-eyed wrath
  Wielding the tomahawk with vengeance brief,
  Or eking out his tortured prisoner’s grief,
While round the death-fire dance his frenzied rout
  Of tattooed clansmen, shivering every leaf
Of these old trees with their demoniac shout
Of horrid glee to see the victim’s life go out.

A hissing flame-tongue from the nether hell
  Is this revenge, which, licking up the tears
Of pity at the fount from which they well,
  All love’s flush from the spring of passion sears,
  And through the tender heartstrings shriveling veers:
The direst fury in the human breast,
  It flourishes through all the savage years,
Fatting on ignorance; yet oft is dressed,
Among the civilized, in Glory’s martial vest.

But Fancy limns him not in scenes alone
  Of barbarous vengeance; round the council fire
The sagamores are gathered; in the tone
  Which Nature’s savage passions aye inspire,
  Stern, iron words he utters, which acquire
Strange force of meaning from his gestures strong,
  As thunders from the leap of lightnings dire:
Beneath yon tree, whence that cicada’s song
Comes hoarsely, haply he harangued the gloomy throng.

Strange are the changes, chieftain, (if such thou,)
  That time has wrought here since then; strange the scene
Would meet thy vision, were it quickened now:
  Where yonder cornfields wave their streamers green,
  Which rustle softly in the breath of e’en,
Tall forest trees locked arms above thee; where
  That closure limits, crooked as the mean
System that made it, earth spread free as air,
And thou and thy red hunters chased the wild deer there.

Then, too, rude wigwams squatted here and there
  In leafy twilight, and the forest maid,
Of black bewildering eye and streaming hair,
  Poured her wild lovesong in the viny shade,
  While at her feet the checkered moonshine played:
Now yonder cluster thick the village homes
  Of men enlightened, and there in the glade
Stand villas, whence the blue-eyed maiden comes,
And with her pale-faced lover here at evening roams.

Like as the red cloud-glories of the dawn,
  That flaunt the orient before the sun,
In his uprising are consumed and gone,
  So faded these wild races, one by one,
  In civilization’s morn, till now are none
Even to guard the graves left here; the hand
  Of Christian white man ruthlessly has done
Away their sacredness; and now we stand,
And muse of human bones uncovered in the sand.

O what a wonder is this human life!
  O what a wonder man! He lives his time,
His little hour, in passion’s, glory’s strife;
  The grave ingulfs him; —from some other clime
  Bards come and spin the melancholy rhyme
Over his noteless bones. Such is the lot,
  Alas! of all: however loud the chime
Of funeral bells when we lie down to rot,
Our graves are leveled soon, and we on earth forgot.

1. Minnehaha
2. The Thought and the Word
3. Freedmen's Battle-Hymn
4. Is Life Worth Living?
5. Rain on the Roof

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