<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117489" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Appeal of the Choctaw</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">We cannot leave our fathers’ land!<br>We cannot leave our fathers’ graves!<br>The long-loved hills that round us stand—<br>Our valleys, with their pleasant waves.<br>Oh, bid us not to trace afar,<br>The pathway of the evening star;<br>We cannot find, where'er we roam,<br>A spot which bears, like this, the name of home!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What though the western forest rise,<br>More tall, more darkly close, than these;<br>And calm the stately wild deer lies,<br>In slumber ‘neath the stately trees;—<br>Though hill and vale are passing fair,<br>And all seems bright and lovely there,<br>We cannot love the beauteous spot,<br>To us the great Manitto gave it not!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What care we for those prairies wide?<br>Our fathers never hunted there;—<br>Those cavern echoes ne'er, in pride,<br>Flung back their wild halloo of war.<br>Those wooded glens, and shaded streams,<br>Came never to our children's dreams;<br>Nor have we, in our young hearts’ glee,<br>Loved, like familiar friends, each rock and tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But here, amid the tempest's rush,<br>Our spirit fathers’ voices thrill!<br>They come at midnight's moonlit hush,<br>Or when the eve-star lights the hill.<br>The thoughts of other times are spread<br>O'er every gray crag's misty head;—<br>And how then can we lightly leave<br>The scenes to which our hearts so fondly cleave?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then have we not in worship bow'd,<br>Before your God, the humbled head?<br>And tamed our spirits, fierce and proud,<br>To till our hunting grounds for bread?<br>And now, that in our bosom's cell,<br>A white man's calmer soul would dwell,<br>You seek to grasp our planted soil,<br>And drive us hence, in distant lands to toil!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, white men! ye have fair smooth brows,<br>And lips whose words we well might trust,<br>But treachery mingles in your vows,<br>Your chain of friendship is but dust!<br>Ye come with falsehood in your hearts,<br>Ye frame your laws with wily arts,<br>And bid us ‘neath their shades to dwell<br>, That we may wither by their blighting spell!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Margaret+Chandler">Elizabeth Margaret Chandler</a> from <i>Poetical Works</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117489" data-title="The Appeal of the Choctaw de Elizabeth Margaret Chandler" data-description="We cannot leave our fathers’ land!/We cannot leave our fathers’ graves!/The long-loved hills that round us stand—/Our valleys, with their pleasant waves./Oh, bid us not to trace afar,/The pathway of the evening star;/We cannot find, where'er..."></div> </div> </div>

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