Away, away to forest shades!
Fly, fly with me the haunts of men!
I would not give my sunlit glades,
My talking stream, and silent glen,
For all the pageantry of slaves,
Their fettered lives and trampled graves.
Away from wealth! our wampum strings
Ask not the toil, the woes of them
From whom the lash, the iron wrings
The golden dross, the tear-soiled gem;
Yet bind our hearts in the pure tie
That gold or gems could never buy.
And power! what is it ye who rule
The hands without the souls? oh, ye
Can tell how mean the tinselled fool,
With all his hollow mockery!
The slave of slaves who hate, yet bow,
With serving lip but scorning brow.
And love, dear love! how can they feel
The wild desire, the burning flame,
That thrills each pulse and bids us kneel--
The power of the adored name;
The glance that sins in the met eye,
Yet loved for its idolatry!
They never knew the perfect bliss,
To clasp in the entwined bower
Her trembling form, to steal the kiss
She would deny but hath not power;
To list that voice that charms the grove,
And trembles when it tells of love.
Nor have they felt the pride, the thrill,
When bounding for the fated deer;
O'er rock and sod, o'er vale and hill,
The hunter flies, nor dreams of fear,
And brings his maid the evening prey,
To speak more love than words can say.
Have they in death the sod, the stones,
The silence of the shading tree;
Where glory decks the storied bones
Of him whose life, whose death, was free;
And minstrel mourns his arm whose blow
The foeman cowered and quailed below?
No; they, confined and fettered, they
The sons of sires to fame unknown,
With nerveless hands and souls of clay,
Half life, half death, loathe, but live on;
And sink unsung, ignobly lie
In dark oblivion's apathy.
Poor fools! the wild and mountain chase
Would rend their frail and sickly forms;
But for their God, how would they face,
Our bands of fire, our sons of storms;
Breasts that have never recked of fears,
And eyes that leave to women, tears.
They tell us of their kings, who gave
To them our wild, unfettered shore;
To them! why let them chain the wave,
And hush its everlasting roar!
Then may we own their sway, but hark!
Our warriors never miss their mark.
Away, away from such as these!
Free as the wild bird on the wing,
I see my own, my loved green trees,
I hear our black-haired maidens sing;
I fly from such a world as this,
To rove, to love, to live in bliss!