Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A DIRGE; OVER A COMPANION KILLED BY COMANCHES AND BURIED ON PRAIRIE, by ALBERT PIKE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A DIRGE; OVER A COMPANION KILLED BY COMANCHES AND BURIED ON PRAIRIE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thy wife shall wait
Last Line: Must leave thee here alone. Once more farewell!
Subject(s): Native Americans - Wars; Pioneers; West (u.s.); Southwest; Pacific States


ALBERT PIKE

THY wife shall wait
Many long days for thee;
And when the gate
Swings on its unused hinges, she,
Opening her dim and grief contracted eye,
And still forbidding hope to die,
Longing for thee will look;
Till like some lone and gentle brook
That pineth in the summer-heat away
And dies someday,
She wastes her mournful life out at her eyes.
Vainly, ah! vainly we deplore
Thy death, departed friend! No more
Shalt thou be seen by us beneath the skies.
The barbed arrow has gone through
Thy heart, and all the blue
Hath faded from thy clay-cold veins, and thou,
With stern and pain-contracted brow,
Like one that wrestled mightily with death,
Art lying there.

Farewell! our course yet further westward lies.
Thy grave is deeper than the wolf can go,
And we have driven the wheels above thee, so
That the Indian may not find thy sepulchre.
Farewell! for now the trains begin to stir;
And we with quivering lip,
And lingering and reluctant step,
Must leave thee here alone. Once more farewell!





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