AN INDIAN SUMMER'S DREAM.

A HAZY, dreamy afternoon of golden Autumn-tide,

My bark was drifting idly down, - my arm had failed to guide;

Quinobequin's fair current, flowing calm and still as night,

Reflected back the purple hills, all bathed in mellow light.

The shady woods, on either side, stretched to the river's brink;

A fringe of drooping foliage in ripples seemed to sink;

The waving branches gently kissed the surface of the stream,

Glancing back their red and gold with many a silvery gleam.

As I floated musing, dreaming, idly 'neath the leafy trees,

Slowly through the water gliding, with a gentle noonday breeze,

I thought I saw an Indian chieftain, armed with bow and quiver,

Standing in a birch canoe that lightly rested on the river.

His eye was keen, his brow was high, he was of lofty mien.

He frowned at first, as if in me a ruthless foe were seen;

But a look of pensive sadness chased the angry frown away,

He sighed, and in the murmuring water seemed to me to say:

"By blue Quinobequin I first beheld the light of day,

About her flow my childhood's hours passed happily away;

'T was by her shore that first I learned to chase the startled deer;

In freedom, through her forests green I wandered far and near.

"T was here that first I saw and wooed my dusky Indian bride;

'T was here we loved, - 't was here we lived, - 't was here my father died;

And then, when I, by right of birth, was chosen to his place,

My name was famous, far and wide, in war and in the chase.

"But one year, when the winds were keen, and frost had chained our land,

A great canoe, with snowy wings, came to our ice-bound strand;

It bore from near the rising sun a band of different race,

With lighter, fairer hair than ours, and with a paler face.

"But strife arose between us, and in war I led my tribe;

My faithless braves deserted me, betrayed me for a bribe;

I fled into the wilderness, - a price was on my head, -

In kind Quinobequin I sank, by Indian bullet, dead.

"But when the sun sinks southward, and through every wood and grove

His own bright gold and scarlet sprinkles, - tokens of his love;

I wander o'er the river in my birchen bark canoe,

Revisiting my childhood's haunts, loved by me long ago.

"And when no lonely reach is left, between the wooded hills,

No tranquil waters undisturbed by lashing wheels of mills,

(For Quinobequin at many a mill doth, angry, rage and boil,

Nay, - rather Charles, - no Indian stream e'er stooped to white man's toil),

"When every sloping river-side doth bear a pale-face home,

When all the grand old forests fall where deer were wont to roam,

When noisy towns, with crashing looms, deface each sylvan shore, -

In my loved river's fountain, then, I'll sink to rise no more."

I woke, as from a dream, - my boat had passed the forest still;

Below, I heard the busy hum of many a rattling mill;

The setting suh, with slanting beams, tipped every rippling wave, -

But soft the river seemed to flow above the chieftain's grave.

F. J. S.