When was the redman's summer? <br />When the rose <br />Hung its first banner out? When the gray rock, <br />Or the brown heath, the radiant kalmia clothed? <br />Or when the loiterer by the reedy brooks <br />Started to see the proud lobelia glow <br />Like living flame? When through the forest gleamed <br />The rhododendron? Or the fragrant breath <br />Of the magnolia swept deliciously <br />Over the half-laden nerve? <br />No. When the groves <br />In fleeting colours wrote their own decay, <br />And leaves fell eddying on the sharpen'd blast <br />That sang their dirge; when o'er their rustling bed <br />The red deer sprang, or fled the shrill-voiced quail, <br />Heavy of wing and fearful; when, with heart <br />Foreboding or depress'd, the white man mark'd <br />The signs of coming winter: then began <br />The Indian's joyous season. Then the haze, <br />Soft and illusive as a fairy dream, <br />Lapp'd all the landscape in its silvery fold. <br />The quiet rivers, that were wont to hide <br />'Neath shelving banks, beheld their course betray'd <br />By the white mist that o'er their foreheads crept, <br />While wrapp'd in morning dreams, the sea and sky <br />Slept 'neath one curtain, as if both were merged <br />In the same element. Slowly the sun, <br />And all reluctantly, the spell dissolved, <br />And then it took upon its parting wing <br />A rainbow glory. <br />Gorgeous was the time <br />Yet brief as gorgeous. Beautiful to thee, <br />Our brother hunter, but to us replete <br />With musing thoughts in melancholy train. <br />Our joys, alas! too oft were woe to thee. <br />Yet ah! poor Indian! whom we fain would drive <br />Both from our hearts, and from thy father's lands, <br />The perfect year doth bear thee on its crown, <br />And when we would forget, repeat thy name<br /><br />Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/indian-summer-19/
