GERTRUDE

OF

WYOMING.

I.

ON Susquehana's side, fair Wyoming!

Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall

And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;

Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all

That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.

Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,

And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,

Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore!

II.

Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies,
The happy shepherd swains had nought to do,
But feed their flocks on green declivities,

Or skim perchance thy lake with light canoe,
From morn, till evening's sweeter pastime grew,
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown,
Thy lovely maidens would the dance renew;
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down

Would echo flagelet from some romantic town.

L

III.

Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes-

And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:

And ev'ry sound of life was full of glee,

From merry

mock-bird's song, or hum of men;

While heark'ning, fearing nought their revelry, The wild deer arch'd his neck from glades, and then Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.

IV.

And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime
Heard, but in transatlantic story rung,

For here the exile met from ev'ry clime,
And spoke in friendship ev'ry distant tongue :
Men from the blood of warring Europe sprung,
Were but divided by the running brook;

And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,

On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook, [hook. The blue-ey'd German chang'd his sword to pruning

V.

Nor far some Andalusian saraband

Would sound to many a native roundelay

But who is he that yet a dearer land

Remembers, over hills and far away?

Green Albyn!' what though he no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,

Thy pellochs rolling from the mountain bay,

Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,

And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan

roar! 3

VI.

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,

That want's stern edict e'er, and feudal grief,
Had forc'd him from a home he lov'd so dear!

Yet found he here a home, and glad relief,

1 Scotland. • The Gaelic appellation for the porpoise. The great whirlpool of the Western Hebrides,

And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf, That fir'd his Highland blood with mickle glee: And England sent her men, of men the chief,

Who taught those sires of Empire yet to be,

To plant the tree of life-, to plant fair freedom's tree!

VII.

Here was not mingled in the city's pomp
Of life's extremes the grandeur and the gloom;
Judgment awoke not here her dismal trump,
Nor seal'd in blood a fellow creature's doom,
Nor mourn'd the captive in a living tomb.
One venerable man, belov'd of all,

Suffic'd where innocence was yet in bloom,
To sway the strife, that seldom might befall;
And Albert was their judge in patriarchal hall.