FROM forests ‘neath whose mighty shade my warrior fathers sleep,
With winds and billows wild and high, across the pathless deep;
O’er mountains whose eternal snows rise glittering to the sky;
By torrents whose proud foaming wrath rolls thunder-echoes high;
Where floods that bear your stately ships, in clear still founts are born;
Through vast and awful solitudes, dim, dread as winter’s morn, —
I come, a stranger lone, my friends, to England’s happy plains,
To bear into her hearths and homes, her palaces and fanes,
A deep voice from the perishing, a nation’s pleading prayer,
That she, from her o’erflowing cup some brimming drops
would spare.
The glory from my race has passed; despoiled, enslaved,
oppressed,
They are melting from their forest haunts like foam from
ocean’s breast;
They are passing to the silent land, they perish day by day,
Their souls unbathed in that red fount that washes guilt away.
Their lands are yours; your cities rise where erst their homes
were found;
Your fair fields smile on what was once their boundless hunting ground.
O nation of the mighty mind, the conquering heart and hand,
Twine with the laurel round your brow the peaceful olive
band.
The crest is fallen from our life, our sun of freedom set,
‘Tis yours to bid a brighter day arise upon us yet.
Speed, speed the glorious gospel’s trump the rolling seas
across;
Soldiers of Christ send forth to plant the banner of the Cross;
The lamp of God’s eternal truth in those far wilds to light,
Where weary eyes grow dim and fail, with straining through
the night;
And be ye strong in faith and heart; deem not their souls too
sunk;
See one whose lips of life’s pure wave have deeply, deeply
drunk.
My brothers, though of other race, in faith and hope the same,
Listen, and highest glory give to Jesu’s blessed name.
Born, reared in forests grand and old, no eagle on the height
Was e’er more proudly free and bold in royalty of might;
A chief among my brother chiefs, as hunter, warrior, none
Such trophies of a lion-heart from chase and field had won.
And not with blood of deer alone, my weapons keen were dyed,
O’er them the life of human hearts had poured its crimson
tide.
What reeked I then of love, of peace, of mercy, all unknown?
O’er my fierce spirit, pride and hate held mastery alone;
The sun, the moon, God’s holy stars, the spirits of the flood,
Of earth, of air, alike I served with rites and deeds of blood.
So passed my fiery manhood on, a dark o’erflowing stream
Of savage joys, unbroken by one higher thought or dream;
But blight fell on my fame’s full flower. The pale-faced
stranger came
O’er the blue deep, our heritage of mount and wood to claim;
And vainly strove the land’s doomed sons, they conquered,
and we fled;
We fled, when ‘neath their wondrous arms our chiefs and
braves had bled.
Outcasts and wanderers midst the shades that had our glories
seen,
Where we, as chiefs and princes free, for years untold had
been;
Then my spirit’s eagle-pinions drooped broken in my breast,
And my lion-heart’s high pulses sunk; I longed to be at rest
With those whose voices haunted me among the ancient trees,
And seemed to breathe on my chained life shame, with each
moaning breeze.
Dark, dark those hours! but light arose: a pale-faced teacher
brought
Strange tidings from the spirit land, of heaven, of hell, he
taught;
Of heaven, where rest the holy dead, for mortal thought too
fair;
Of hell, where sinners dwell with fiends, in utter blank despair.
I listened, and strange yearnings broke within my heart’s
unrest,
And hope, pale, faint, as eve’s first star, gleamed trembling
o’er my breast.
“That glorious heaven! oh, can there be in it a place for me,
An Indian of the Chippewa?” I asked him. “E’en for thee!”
He answered. “All are welcome there, for the Great Spirit
gave
His only, his beloved Son, filled with his life-blood’s wave,
A fount to cleanse the guiltiest soul; and all who in that name,
The name of Jesus, entrance ask, a welcome sure may claim.”
I left him, but my troubled soul was burdened with its sin;
The arrow to its mark had sped, and rankled sore within.
Like one of our own mountain deer, that feels the hunter’s
dart,
And madly flies o’er hill and plain from agony to part,
Till nature’s energies all spent, it sinks upon the earth,
And hears at hand some cool fresh stream dance by in rippling
mirth,
Yet dies of thirst, —in those glad sounds, I felt in my despair,
Heaven’s pearly gates would open wide unto the voice of
prayer,
Breathed in that strange sweet name of power; but the Great
Spirit heard
No tongue, I thought, but England’s own; Would that one
mighty word
Suffice, or must I perish yet? “Great Spirit, Jesus, save
Poor Indian sinner; Jesus, save,” I pleaded; but a grave
Seemed closing o’er that last bright hope, till at the white
man’s board
I heard again a fervent prayer, to heaven’s Great Spirit poured.
“God hears that English prayer,” I moaned; but when the
feast was o’er,
To the great God of earth and heaven the teacher spoke once
more:
Joy, joy! it was in Chippewa 1 my father’s tongue and mine
“Oh, God can hear my Chippewa, he understandeth thine,”
I shouted, and away I rushed far from that festive throng,
And poured forth, in my own wild tongue, cries passionate and
strong;
And He who came to seek and save the outcast and defiled
Outstretched his arms of mercy wide, and clasped me as his
child.
His Spirit whispered, “I have heard, I love thee, be thou
whole;”
And, like a river broad and deep, peace flowed into my soul;
A stream, whose full flow faileth not, its well-spring filled
above,
From ocean depths of grace divine, of everlasting love.
My tale is told; I cast aside my battle-bow and spear;
I spread the good news far and wide. My brothers, I am here,
E’en I, a dark fierce heathen once — blood-stained, accursed —
now
A jewel in the diadem on Jean’s glorious brow,
To plead in prayers for words too strong, in grief for tears too
deep,
With you to save the perishing — my people o’er the deep!
True Christian, bold and faithful, hear this, and be thou
strong;
Think on it, weary pilgrim, as thou journeyest along;
Pale mourner, list; thy blinding tears ‘twill touch with rainbow
rays;
Weak trembler, thou of little faith, thy doubts ‘twill turn to
praise;
Frail child of earth, whate’er thy lot, whoe’er, whate’er thou
art,
Take from the Indian’s child-like trust, a lesson to thine
heart;
Thy praise, need, grief, fear, pour thou forth, in simple tones
and free;
The God who heard this Chippewa will surely bend to thee.