Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Ye say, their cone-like cabins,
That clustered o’er the vale,
Have ed away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale:
But their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.
Old Massachusetts wears it
Within her lordly crown.
And broad Ohio bears it
Amid his young renown;
Connecticut hath wreathed it
Where her quiet foliage waves.
And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse
Through all her ancient caves.
Wachuset hides its lingering voice
Within his rocky heart,
And Alleghany graves its tone
Throughout his lofty chart;
Monadnock on his forehead hoar
Doth seal the sacred trust.
Your mountains build their monument,
Though ye destroy their dust.
4.6.3 “Our Aborigines”
(1838)
I heard the forests as they cried
Unto the valleys green,
“Where is the red-brow’d hunter-race,
Who lov’d our leafy screen?
Who humbled ‘mid these dewy glades
The red deer’s antler’d crown,
Or soaring at his highest noon.
Struck the strong eagle down.
Then in the zephyr’s voice replied
Those vales, so meekly blest,
“They rear’d their dwellings on our side,
Their corn upon our breast;
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