Classic Poem

A century lonely hast thou stood
Here all forsaken and forgot!
All men failed thee to visit save
Some idle lover of sylvan haunts
Who trod, perchance, this hallowed spot,
And cast a pensive eye upon
This lovely glade, thy sole abode
(Full lost in these continuous woods),
And brooding o'er thy lowly lot,
Oft thus did muse: " This cabin lone
Here stands to tell the tale of him,
Back-woodsman brave, who having scaled
The mystic mountains ne'er returned
To them, though loved yet left behind;
But here he chose his last abode,
These gloomy woods whose blackness stands
Up hard against horizon's slope;
Grim, spectral, dreaded, and untrod
Save monsters great of savage mien,
That prowled, or crouched upon their prey;
Sent forth a vicious roar that fairly shook
Old Sylvia far and near, from vale
Through crag to mountain peak!

Upon this spot the redskin oft
Has danced his " War dance" and his " Feast,"
His face a reddish hue aglow —
Long locks with eaglets' plumes bedecked;
His bow and never-failing dart,
And scalper dangling at his side.
More brightly gleamed his wary eye,
As braves the war-whoop loudly yelled —
A sight more like the fiery fiends
From Pluto's ghastly shore returned
Than human blood and bone!
They all have gone and left no tale
But woe which hurled them ever hence
To that shore whence no bark returns.
Old Cabin, thou, a land-mark art,
Of human progress' steady march! "