But wary and armed to the teeth
          are the resolute Frenchmen, and ready,
If need be, to grapple with death,
          and to die hand to hand in the forest. 
Yet skilled in the arts and the wiles
          of the cunning and crafty Algonkins[AW]
They cover their hearts with their smiles,
          and hide their suspicions of evil. 
Round their low, smouldering fire,
          feigning sleep, lie the watchful and wily Dakotas;
But DuLuth and his voyageurs heap
          their fire that shall blaze till the morning,
Ere they lay themselves snugly to rest,
          with their guns by their sides on the blankets,
As if there were none to molest
          but the gray, skulking wolves of the forest.

[AW] Ojibways.

’Tis midnight.  The rising moon gleams,
          weird and still, o’er the dusky horizon;
Through the hushed, somber forest she beams,
          and fitfully gloams on the meadows;
And a dim, glimmering pathway she paves,
          at times, on the dark stretch of river. 
The winds are asleep in the caves—­
          in the heart of the far-away mountains;
And here on the meadows and there,
          the lazy mists gather and hover;
And the lights of the Fen-Spirits[72] flare
          and dance on the low-lying marshes,
As still as the footsteps of death
          by the bed of the babe and its mother;
And hushed are the pines, and beneath
          lie the weary-limbed boatmen in slumber. 
Walk softly,—­walk softly, O Moon,
          through the gray, broken clouds in thy pathway,
For the earth lies asleep and the boon
          of repose is bestowed on the weary. 
Toiling hands have forgotten their care;
          e’en the brooks have forgotten to murmur;
But hark!—­there’s a sound on the air!—­
          ’tis the light-rustling robes of the Spirits,
Like the breath of the night in the leaves
           or the murmur of reeds on the river,
In the cool of the mid-summer eyes,
          when the blaze of the day has descended. 
Low-crouching and shadowy forms,
          as still as the gray morning’s footsteps,
Creep sly as the serpent that charms,
          on her nest in the meadow, the plover;
In the shadows of pine-trunks they creep,
          but their panther-eyes gleam in the fire-light,
As they peer on the white-men asleep,
          in the glow of the fire, on their blankets. 
Lo in each swarthy right-hand a knife;
          in the left-hand, the bow and the arrows! 
Brave Frenchmen, awake to the strife!—­
          or you sleep in the forest forever. 
Nay, nearer and nearer they glide,
          like ghosts on the field of their battles,
Till close on the sleepers, they bide
          but the signal of death from Tamdoka. 
Still the sleepers sleep on.  Not a breath