You are Tecumseh--else you should choke for this! (Haughtily crosses the stage and pauses.) Stay! Let me think! I must not break with him-- 'Tis premature. I know his tender part, And I shall touch it. (Recrosses the stage.) Brother, let me ask, Do you remember how our father fell? (TECUMSEH: Who can forget Kanawha's bloody fray? He died for home in battle with the whites.) And you remember, too, that boyish morn, When all our braves were absent on the chase-- That morn when you and I half-dreaming lay In summer grass, but woke to deadly pain Of loud-blown bugles ringing through the air. They came!--a rush of chargers from the woods, With tramplings, cursings, shoutings manifold, And headlong onset, fierce with brandished swords, Of frontier troopers eager for the fight. Scarce could a lynx have screened itself from sight, So sudden the attack--yet, trembling there, We crouched unseen, and saw our little town Stormed, with vile slaughter of small babe and crone, And palsied grandsire--you remember it?

Prophet Monologue from Tecumseh : a Drama

Rehearse Prophet's monologue