[Page 60]

SONG OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN.

1 Stranger, stay, nor wish to climb
2 The heights of yonder hills sublime;
3 For there strange shapes and spirits dwell,
36 The Indians believe some of their high mountains to be inhabited by supernatural beings.
4 That oft the murmuring thunders swell,
5 Of power from the impending steep
6 To hurl thee headlong to the deep;
7 But secure with us abide,
8 By the winding river's side;
9 Our gladsome toil, our pleasures share,
10 And think not of a world of care.
11 The lonely cayman,
37 The alligator.
where he feeds
12 Among the green high-bending reeds,[Page 61]
13 Shall yield thee pastime; thy keen dart
14 Through his bright scales shall pierce his heart.
15 Home returning from our toils,
16 Thou shalt bear the tiger's spoils;
17 And we will sing our loudest strain
18 O'er the forest-tyrant slain!
19 Sometimes thou shalt pause to hear
20 The beauteous cardinal sing clear;
21 Where hoary oaks, by time decayed,
22 Nod in the deep wood's pathless glade;
23 And the sun, with bursting ray,
24 Quivers on the branches gray.
25 By the river's craggy banks,
26 O'erhung with stately cypress-ranks,
27 Where the bush-bee
38 The bush-bee lives on shrubs and low trees.
hums his song,
28 Thy trim canoe shall glance along.
29 To-night at least, in this retreat,
30 Stranger! rest thy wandering feet;
31 To-morrow, with unerring bow,
32 To the deep thickets fearless we will go.

Text

  • TEI/XML (XML - 110K / ZIP - 10K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 1.1K / ZIP - 837 )

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized from a copy held at the University of California Libraries.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 457K)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): SONG OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN.
Themes:
Genres:

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Bowles, William Lisle, 1762-1850. The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. I. With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 9 North Bank Street..., 1855, pp. 60-61.  (Page images digitized from a copy held at the University of California Libraries.)

Editorial principles

Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by William Lisle Bowles