Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A river of flame the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hill-tops rise.
And, westering, dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day.
A little skiff slips o’er the burnished stream;
A wake of flame, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.
Was it the boat, the solitude, and hush,
That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms?
That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush,
Start into eagle-plumes?
That made me seem to hear the breaking brush,
And, as the stag’s great antlers swelled in view,
To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush,
That dipped to the canoe?
To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves?
And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires’ glow,
The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves,
Each with his battle-bow?...
But now the vision like the sunset fades,
The clouds of ribbéd gold have oozed their light;
And from the west, like sombre sachem shades,
Gallop the shades of night.
The broad Ohio glitters to the stars;
And many murmurs wander through its woods—
Is it the mourning of dead warriors
For their lost solitudes?
The moon is set; but, like another moon,
The crescent of the river shimmers there,
Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone
Beheld it flowing fair.