Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Fragment, Descriptive of Those Extraordinary Animals Whose Bones Have Been Found in the Western Country

Josias Lyndon Arnold (1768–1796)

THE MONSTERS rage, and round the earth

Spread ruin and destruction fell,

Sent by the great Pehoogthsi’s wrath,

Fierce from the angry gates of hell.

Haste, my Shootai, haste away,

Destruction waits upon delay!

Above the highest pines they raise

In horrid majesty their head;

Their eyes in vengeful anger blaze,

Their jaws grind nations of the dead.

Haste, my Shootai, haste away,

Destruction waits upon delay!

Save us, Oroonoh! at a leap

O’er Allegany’s height they bound,

O’er Huron’s darkly rolling deep,

And with convulsions rend the ground.

Haste, my Shootai, haste away,

Destruction waits upon delay!

They breathe, the woods are prostrate laid,

The rocks are moved; they roar,

Old Erie on his fall is stay’d,

Kanhawa trembles on his shore.

Haste, my Shootai, haste away,

Destruction waits upon delay!