In a western city new-born from a withering fire,
Fresh as a phœnix that rises renewed from the pyre,
I, musing aloft, far removed from the noise of the street,
Looked down from my window and saw where the palaces spread
In stony files o'er the wigwams of red men dead,—
Ground into dust in the march of the white men's feet.
Then I mixed with the crowd and beheld how the white men strive,
Jostle and fret as the bees ere they swarm from the hive,—

Marked how with weapons newfangled the fight goes on,—
And asked: 'What good or to soul or to body's health
Has come of the change?' And the answer was: 'Golden wealth,—
Golden each step we have made o'er the red man gone.'
As I looked in the white hatchet faces I half understood
How 'gold' was the word which they said when they thought to say 'good;'—
They had chaffered away the true scale of the value of life,
They who giving their hand to a brother were 'ware of a thief,
Having sharpened their wits on the whetstone of unbelief,
As for 'good' they read gold, they for 'peace in possession' saw 'strife.'
The red man who out of his tribe nor demanded nor gave
Either quarter or grace, was a child with each brotherly 'brave,'
And as simply plighted the word he as simply kept;
He followed the buffalo thundering over the plain
With a fierce delight, ere he feasted upon him slain,—
Toyed with the squaw well content with his leavings, and slept.
Then I laughed: 'Dull savage, who fashioned and threw the spear,
Deft-handed, swift-footed, lynx-eyed, keen of scent, fine of ear,—

Whom the white man supplanted as red men supplanted the beast;
Will the red man or white, with his biliary troubles to cheat,
With his advertised nostrums, his blundering fingers and feet,
His sensory slowness, strained nerves, and his hurried heart-beat,
Arise the more lean when they both shall have finished life's feast?