[Illustration]

“She has followed the years that are gone,” he said;
“The spirits the words of the witch fulfill;
For I saw the ghost of my father dead,
By the moon’s dim light on the misty hill. 
He shook the plumes on his withered head,
And the wind through his pale form whistled shrill. 
And a low, sad voice on the hill I heard,
Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird.” 
Then lo, as he looked from his lodge afar,
He saw the glow of the Evening-star;
“And yonder,” he said, “is Wiwaste’s face;
She looks from her lodge on our fading race,
Devoured by famine, and fraud, and war,
And chased and hounded by fate and woe,
As the white wolves follow the buffalo;”
And he named the planet the Virgin Star.[54]

“Wakawa,” he muttered, “the guilt is thine! 
She was pure—­she was pure as the fawn unborn. 
O why did I hark to the cry of scorn,
Or the words of the lying libertine? 
Wakawa, Wakawa, the guilt is thine! 
The springs will return with the voice of birds,
But the voice of my daughter will come no more. 
She wakened the woods with her musical words,
And the sky-lark, ashamed of his voice, forbore. 
She called back the years that had passed, and long
I heard their voice in her happy song. 
O why did the chief of the tall Hohe
His feet from Kapoza[6] so long delay? 
For his father sat at my father’s feast,
And he at Wakawa’s—­an honored guest. 
He is dead!—­he is slain on the Bloody Plain,
By the hand of the treacherous Chippeway;
And the face shall I never behold again
Of my brave young brother—­the chief Chaske. 
Death walks like a shadow among my kin;
And swift are the feet of the flying years
That cover Wakawa with frost and tears,
And leave their tracks on his wrinkled skin. 
Wakawa, the voice of the years that are gone
Will follow thy feet like the shadow of death,
Till the paths of the forest and desert lone
Shall forget thy footsteps.  O living breath,
Whence are thou, and whither so soon to fly? 
And whence are the years?  Shall I overtake
Their flying feet in the star-lit sky? 
From his last long sleep will the warrior wake? 
Will the morning break in Wakawa’s tomb,
As it breaks and glows in the eastern skies? 
Is it true?—­will the spirits of kinsmen come
And bid the bones of the brave arise? 
Wakawa, Wakawa, for thee the years
Are red with blood and bitter with tears. 
Gone—­brothers, and daughters, and wife—­all gone
That are kin to Wakawa—­but one—­but one—­
Wakinyan Tanka—­undutiful son! 
And he estranged from his father’s tee,
Will never return till the chief shall die. 
And what cares he for his father’s grief? 
He will smile at my death—­it will make him chief. 
Woe burns in my bosom.  Ho, warriors—­Ho! 
Raise the song of red war; for your chief must go