The monarch rested from his toils,
Weary of war, and full of spoils.
His hatchet slept; his bow, unstrung
And shaftless, in his cabin hung;
His tomahawk was in the ground,
The wild war-whoop had ceased to sound,
And thirty chieftains, tall and proud,
To his imperial sceptre bow’d.
Far in their mountain lurking-place
The Manakins had heard his fame,{1}
And Manahocks dared not come down
His valleys to pursue their game;
And Susquehannah’s giant race,{2}
Who feared to meet no other man,
Would tremble in their fastnesses
To hear the name of Powhatan.[A]
From the broad James’s winding side
To smooth Potomac’s broader tide,
From Chesapeake’s surf-beaten shore
To where the mountain torrents roar,
His powerful sway had been confess’d,
And thirty tribes one monarch bless’d.{3}