At the looks they cast upon her, Forth into the empty forest Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting, With his mighty bow of ash-tree, Cried he with his face uplifted Through the far-resounding forest, But there came no other answer All day long roved Hiawatha In that melancholy forest, Through the shadow of whose thickets, He had brought his young wife homeward When the birds sang in the thickets, And the streamlets laughed and glistened, And the air was full of fragrance, And the lovely Laughing Water Said with voice that did not tremble, In the wigwam with Nokomis, With those gloomy guests, that watched her, With the Famine and the Fever, She was lying, the Beloved, She the dying Minnehaha. "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 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 !" "Ah!" she said, "the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers Clasping mine amid the darkness! And the desolate Hiawatha, Miles away among the mountains, Over snow-fields waste and pathless, Empty-handed, heavy-hearted, Would that I had perished for you, And he rushed into the wigwam, That the forest moaned and shuddered, That the very stars in heaven At the feet of Laughing Water, At those willing feet, that never With both hands his face he covered, And at night a fire was lighted, From the bed of Minnehaha, Stood and watched it at the doorway, XXI. THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT IN his lodge beside a river, |