William McCarty, comp. The American National Song Book. 1842.
Fall of TecumsehW
To the war-blast indignantly tramping?
Their mouths are all white, as if frosted with foam,
The steel bit impatiently champing.
Conducting the free and the fearless.
Ah! see them rush forward, with wild disdain,
Through paths unfrequented and cheerless.
Announcing that chivalrous sally;
The savage was heard, with untrembling breath,
To pour his response from the valley.
And naught but the war-whoop given;
The next—and the sky seemed convulsively stirr’d,
As if by the lightning riven.
The blood-stifled gasp of the dying,
Were screen’d by the curling sulphur-smoke,
That upward went wildly flying.
The chief of the horsemen contended;
His rowels were bathed in the purple flood
That fast from his charger descended.
But the rider repress’d not his daring,
Till met by a savage, whose rank and might
Were shown by the plume he was wearing.
Had ne’er swung the battle-axe o’er him;
But hope nerved his arm for a desperate blow,
And Tecumseh fell prostrate before him.
With conflict so dark and appalling!—
Foe grappled with foe, till the life-blood burst
From their agonized bosoms in falling.
Where the hopes of the red man perish’d;
But the fame of the hero who fell shall not,
By the virtuous, cease to be cherish’d.
With a spirit most loving and loyal,
And long shall the Indian warrior sing
The deeds of Tecumseh, the royal.
In his arm slept the force of the thunder,
But the bolt pass’d the suppliant harmlessly by,
And left the freed captive to wonder.
With a rudely-built tumulus o’er him;
And the bright-bosom’d Thames, in its majesty, sweeps
By the mound where his followers bore him.