Classic Poem

Cold in the autumn night—
Sleeping with its waters bright,
Gilded by the moon's pale light,
Stretching to the northward white—
Rests the Bay of Sturgeons.

Huddled round it, sleeping soft,
Looming their great forms aloft
In the moonlight;

Bearded, grey, the great rocks stand
Silent, hushed, on either hand,
As if some dusky warrior band,
To-night, hushed, from the spirit land,
Came back once more.

Gliding here on either shore,
Lingering near the haunts of yore,
But to hear the waves once more
As in nights long, long before,
Whisper: Medwayosh.

Towering stern, each blanket round,
Have the silent ages wound,
As they watched above each mound,
O'er the grave or battle-ground,
Where each warrior sleeps.
. . . . . . . .

Once by these shores these warriors played,
Here lover bronzed and maiden strayed,
And as they parted coyly stayed
To plight their troth.

And oft when summer moons were young,
When swaying branches murmuring hung,
Whispered their loves in unknown tongue.
Oft in the autumn harvest feast,
Through purple mists from out the east,
They watched old Gheezis golden-fleeced,
Rise o'er the forest.

Here many a warrior sleeps below,
His place of rest full well they know,
Marked where the midday's glorious glow
Turns to the west.

The world of men may burn and burn,
But in these dreamy walls of fern,
Swathed in deep rest, they never turn.

Through the dim ages soft they sleep,
Wrapt in calm slumber, long and deep,
While Nepenthean dews their eyelids steep.

A wild, strange banquet long ago,
Whose lamps in midst of festive glow
And mirthful sounds, burnt sudden low.
. . . . . . . .

O sunsets old long wandered down;
O ancient Indian shore and town;
Time's strange dark roll hath wrapt around
Thy dreamless sleep.

O saddest picture of a race—
A wild and passionate broken race—
That melting nightward leaves no trace,
No camp-fire on the sweet, loved face
Of their own land;
As shades that wander to their rest,
Toward those dim regions of the west
And setting sun.

No wonder that in sternest close
The last wild war-cry weirdly rose,
To break the settler's short repose
In midnight hour.

Sleep, sleep, by dreamy bank and stream;
Sleep through the dim year's afternoon;
Let no strange babblers break thy dream,
No softer, weaker voices wean
Thee from thy rest.

Sleep, sleep, by dreamy shore and glen;
Sleep on through murk, and mist, and moon,
Through the mad years of modern men,
While only dreams of cave and fen
Fill each wild breast.