106

110

Could not fight without his arrows.
Ah, no more such noble warriors
Could be found on earth as they were!
Now the men were all like women,
Only used their tongues for weapons!
She was thinking of a hunter,
From another tribe and country,
Young and tall and very handsome,
Who one morning, in the Spring-time,
Came to buy her father's arrows,
Sat and rested in the wigwam,
Lingered long about the doorway,
Looking back as he departed.
She had heard her father praise him,
Praise his courage and his wisdom; 115
Would he come again for arrows
To the Falls of Minnehaha?
On the mat her hands lay idle,
And her eyes were very dreamy.
Through their thoughts they heard a
footstep,

120

215

220

us, When we are old and lean upon them, Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, With his flute of reeds, a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for the stranger!" Pleasant was the journey homeward, Through interminable forests, Over meadow, over mountain, Over river, hill, and hollow. Short it seemed to Hiawatha, Though they journeyed very slowly, Though his pace he checked and slackened

To the steps of Laughing Water.

225

230

Over wide and rushing rivers In his arms he bore the maiden; Light he thought her as a feather, As the plume upon his head-gear; Cleared the tangled pathway for her, 235 Bent aside the swaying branches, Made at night a lodge of branches, And a bed with boughs of hemlock, And a fire before the doorway With the dry cones of the pine-tree. 240 All the travelling winds went with them,

O'er the meadow, through the forest: All the stars of night looked at them, Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber;

O the long and dreary Winter!
O the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found

none,

10

15

Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,

With the Famine and the Fever,

She was lying, the Beloved,

She the dying Minnehaha.

90

95

"Hark!" she said; "I hear a rushing, Hear a roaring and a rushing, Hear the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to me from a distance!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, ""Tis the night-wind in the pine-trees!" "Look!" she said; "I see my father 100 Standing lonely at his doorway, Beckoning to me from his wigwam In the land of the Dacotahs!" "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, "'Tis the smoke, that waves and beckons!"

105

70

Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long: long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet, 75
And the trees that o'ershadow each
well-known street,

As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, 80 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."