Light of Christianity in the Wigwam
Oh why, ye subtle spirits, why
Lift I my eyes to yonder floating sky,
Where clouds paint pictures with so clear a hue?
A heaven so beautiful it must be true.
For if I but to earth withdraw my eyes,
And fix them on the creature man
To scan his acts, the dear, fond picture dies,
And worse he seems in thought, and air, and plan
Than the hyena, beast that only digs
For food, and not rejoices in the dart,
That stopped the warm blood current of the heart.
Had men but had just what the earth can give,
It would be misery, and lies, and blood,
Pinching and hunger, so that he who lives
But lives, as some poor outcast drowning in a flood.
And then—ah, tell me!—whither goes the soul?
Oh why, ye spirits blest, oh why
Is truth so darkened to the human eye?
As if a sombre cloud all heaven made black,
And the sun shone but through a chink or crack,
Within a wall, where light is but the accident of things,
And not the purport. Truth may be then as the white men write,
And all our tribes in a darkness set, instead of light.