The cold mist climbs the castle wall, EPILOGUE. THE TWO RECORDING ANGELS ASCENDING. The Angel of Good Deeds (with closed book). God sent his messenger the rain, And said unto the mountain brook, And leap, with naked, snow-white feet, God sent his messenger of faith, And whispered in the maiden's heart, Thy freshness on the barren sands O beauty of holiness, Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! O power of meekness, Whose very gentleness and weakness Upon the pages Of the sealed volume that I bear, The deed divine Is written in characters of gold That never shall grow old, But through all ages Burn and shine With soft effulgence! O God! it is thy indulgence That fills the world with the bliss Of a good deed like this. The Angel of Evil Deeds (with open book), Not yet, not yet Is the red sun wholly set, But evermore recedes, While open still I bear The Book of Evil Deeds, To let the breathings of the upper air Visit its pages and erase The records from its face! Begin to quiver Along the whitening surface of the paper; The terrible words grow faint and fade, And in their place Runs a white space! Down goes the sun! Who by repentance Has escaped the dreadful sentence, Shines bright below me as I look. With closed Book To God do I ascend. Lo! over the mountain steeps A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps A blackness inwardly brightening As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning, And a cry of lamentation, Repeated and again repeated, Deep and loud As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud, Swells and rolls away in the distance, As if the sheeted Lightning retreated, Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance. It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister, And labours for some good By us not understood! The Song of Hiawatha. THIS Indian Edda-if I may so call it-is founded on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his Algic Researches, Vol. I. p. 134; and in his History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part III. p. 314, may be found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief. Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians. The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable. SHOULD you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odours of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows, I should answer, I should tell you, From the mountains, moors, and fenlands, Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes. I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha, Should you ask where Nawadaha In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyrie of the eagle! "All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fenlands, In the melancholy marshes; And the pleasant water-courses, * "There he sang of Hiawatha, Ye who love the haunts of Nature, And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, And the rushing of great rivers Through their palisades of pine-trees, And the thunder in the mountains, Whose innumerable echoes Flap like eagles in their eyries;- To this Song of Hiawatha ! *This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albany County, New York. Ye who love a nation's legends, Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe, that in all ages Every human heart is human, There are longings, yearnings, strivings, Touch God's right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened;Listen to this simple story, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles Of the Here and the Hereafter;- I. THE PEACE-PIPE. ON the Mountains of the Prairie, 14 |