many a maid has watched the dark banks over--
He comes not, yet, in truth, he was a faithful lover.

XVII.
For then, perchance, thy stream ran red with blood,
Then pale and red men met upon thy shore--
Embracing foes they sunk within the flood,
Fierce twins in death, and joined forevermore,--
Forevermore in time. Eternity!
_Thy_ doom we see not, and we may not see,
But God is just! to Him the red race fly,
Driv'n to the pathless West, thence upward to the sky.

XVIII.
Here once Boone trod--the hardy Pioneer--
The only white man in the wilderness:[3]
Oh! how he loved, alone, to hunt the deer,
Alone, at eve, his simple meal to dress;
No mark upon the tree, nor print, nor track,
To lead him forward, or to guide him back;
He roved the forest, king by main and might,
And looked up to the sky and shaped his course aright.

XIX.
That mountain, there, that lifts its bald high head
Above the forest, was, perchance, his throne;
There has he stood and marked the woods outspread,
Like a great kingdom, that was all his own;
In hunting shirt and moccassins arrayed,
With bear skin cap, and pouch, and needful blade,
How carelessly he leaned upon his gun!
That sceptre of the wild, that had so often won.

XX.
Those western Pioneers an impulse felt.
Which their less hardy sons scarce comprehend;
Alone, in Nature's wildest scenes, they dwelt,
Where crag, and precipice, and torrent blend,
And stretched around the wilderness, as rude
As the red rovers of its solitude,
Who watched their coming with a hate profound,
And fought with deadly strife for every inch of ground.

XXI.
To shun a greater ill sought they the wild?
No! they left happier lands behind them far,
And brought the nursing mother and her child
To share the dangers of the border war;
The log-built cabin from the Indian barred,
Their little boy, perchance, kept watch and ward,
While Father ploughed with rifle at his back,
Or sought the glutted foe through many a devious track.

XXII.
How cautiously, yet fearlessly, that boy
Would search the forest for the wild beast's lair,
And lift his rifle with a hurried joy