Not so the ancients of these lands: 
    The Indian, when from life released,
  Again is seated with his friends,
    And shares again the joyous feast.

  His imaged birds and painted bowl
    And venison, for a journey dressed,
  Bespeak the nature of the soul,
    Activity that knows no rest.

  His bow for action ready bent,
    And arrows with a head of stone,
  Can only mean that life is spent,
    And not the finer essence gone.

  Thou, stranger that shalt come this way. 
    No fraud upon the dead commit—­
  Observe the swelling turf and say,
    They do not lie, but here they sit.

  Here still a lofty rock remains,
    On which the curious eye may trace
  (Now wasted half by wearing rains)
    The fancies of a ruder race.

  Here still an aged elm aspires,
    Beneath whose far-projecting shade
  (And which the shepherd still admires)
    The children of the forest played.

  There oft a restless Indian queen
    (Pale Sheba with her braided hair),
  And many a barbarous form is seen
    To chide the man that lingers there.

  By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews,
    In vestments for the chase arrayed,
  The hunter still the deer pursues,
    The hunter and the deer—­a shade!

  And long shall timorous Fancy see
    The painted chief and pointed spear,
  And Reason’s self shall bow the knee
    To shadows and delusions here.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THE UNION.

[From the Reply to Hayne, January 25, 1830.]

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union.  It is to that Union we owe our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad.  It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.  That Union we readied only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity.  It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit.  Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead and sprang forth with newness of life.  Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits.  It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.