Philip of Pokanoket by Washington Irving — Read

As monumental bronze unchanged his look: / A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook: / Train'd from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier, / The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook / Impassive -- fearing but the shame of fear -- / A stoic of the woods -- a man without a tear. / Campbell

It is to be regretted that those early writers who treated of the discovery and settlement of America have not given us more particular and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive state and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unexplored tracts of human nature -- in witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment, and perceiving those generous and romantic qualities which have been artificially cultivated by society vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude magnificence.