Till he scoff’d at each racking pain;
His courage is strong,
He will not mourn long,
He will live and love again!
Not long, not long, will he roam that bank,
He will leave his grief behind,
For the prairie flowers and grasses rank
Are surging beneath the wind;
My gallant hunter will feed new hopes;
The elks, the swans, and the antelopes,
Bring joy to him with the time and tide,
The herd of buffaloes ranging wide,
The trooping wolves ’neath the winter moons,
The grisly bears and the ring’d racoons,
The whooping cranes on their broad white wings,
The beaver haunting the water springs,
The porcupine in the cypress trees,
Tribes of the river, and air, and seas—
All are his birthright, the bold and free!
Sometimes, among his brave joys, will he,
Sadly and kindly, remember me?
But she who won
Him from us, my son!
Will come with her treacherous smile:
She grudges us all—
E’en that tribute small
Of sorrowful thought away she’ll wile;
For what is the dead love—oh, my child!
Sleeping death’s sleep on the prairie wild,
Hidden in woods, with the owlet shrill,
Bedew’d by clouds on the funeral hill,
Moor’d on her bier among waters still?
The tribe moves on, she is left behind,
To rain and sunshine, to snow and wind:
Changing, and darkening, and crumbling away,
What is the Dead Love of yesterday?
Silent for ever, a thing of nought,
Only a shadow—a doleful thought,
Even to every man-child she brought
Let us go, let us go!
Be it ever so low.
Let waves whirl us and hurl us away
Over the granite wall,
Fathoms deep let us fall,
Youthful, exulting, death’s beautiful prey,
Wreathed and enshrouded in volumes of spray.”
Ages ago her grief was o’er,
Ages ago her sorrows slept,
The Isle is seen of men no more
Where willows and mimosas wept,
Cedars and pines away are swept;
But when the morning lights the sky,
Men see that Indian gliding by,
With airy plume and misty vest,
An infant shadow on her breast,
Chanting the sorrows that she knew;
Her oars keep time, her vague canoe
Still rides the maddest waters through.
