*Virginia Dare was the first non-Native American born in the US. Her grandfather, John White, returned to England, and was delayed in returning to the Roanoke colony for several years. When he finally returned, there was hardly a trace of the settlement. To this day, their fate is unknown.

 

Meet Virginia, cold and white

The first-born child of a nation's freedom-plight

She was seldom happy, always hungry

Her grandfather was in a hurry

He left her in the care

Of her frightened mother fair

Her eyes were large, her fingers small

Tightly clutching her ragged doll

Her first four years were a constant struggle

To warm her, Mother pulled her close to snuggle

Away from pain and death to hide

For Mother could no longer provide.

As her mother's soul slipped from her

Virginia dared not try to stir

A salty tear dropped from her face

Onto her mother's last embrace

 

Now an orphan, a tiny lost pearl

All of Roanoke were dead, or gone

Except for a little girl

Virginia wandered from door to door

Then sat and wept upon the forest floor

Once she resigned herself to her fate

She gathered herself up, grasped her tattered play-mate

Virginia's tears at last did quell

She snatched up a razor-sharp sea-shell

And carved into a tree, standing tall and alone

A jumble of letters, a foreign word,

Spelling "Croatoan"

 

She watched as her tide-pool image

Morphed into mirage

Her body transformed into soul

Instead of a heart, she now had a hole

Soon she was nothing but a mirage, a mist 

With cold, dead eyes and lips that kissed

The brow of her grandfather, back again

Returned to the land filled with naught but pain

"What has happened? Where did they go?"

But for a few relics, all dissappeared with snow

 

In the memory of the lost ones of Roanoke

With a rusty spade he began to poke

A mound of dirt, a gaping hole

An empty grave for every lost soul

Roaming the hills, forever alone

Not able to relieve themselves with even a moan

 

Grandfather sat, leaned against a stump

Looked up, saw scrawling that made him jump

On a tree, in a yound child's rough lettering

A message he would back to England bring

Virginia watched him, standing close by

As he got up from where he lie

Down his spine ran a cold chill

When through her he walked to the hole to fill

She writhed, she screamed, she threw herself aft

Yet in the light of day she was naught but a draft

Grandfather left, his old heart broken

While Virginia drifted, another ghost unwoken

 

It is said, at night, when the air is cool

You might see her leaned against that gnarled tree

Her large eyes larger, eerily quite and full

Of tears unshed, of a soul not free

Meet Virginia, cold and white

She forever haunts the Roanoke hills

On lonely, misty nights.