The cold mist climbs the castle wall,
And lays his hand upon thy cheek!
(They go in.)

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,
"Rise up, and from thy caverns look,

And leap, with naked, snow-white feet,
From the cool hills into the heat,
Of the broad, arid plain.”

God sent his messenger of faith,

And whispered in the maiden's heart,
"Rise up, and look from where thou art,
And scatter with unselfish hands

Thy freshness on the barren sands
And solitudes of Death."

O beauty of holiness,

Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness!

O power of meekness,

Whose very gentleness and weakness
Are like the yielding, but irresistible air!

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;
Shade after shade

The terrible words grow faint and fade,

And in their place

Runs a white space!

Down goes the sun!
But the soul of one,

Who by repentance

Has escaped the dreadful sentence,

Shines bright below me as I look.
It is the end!

With closed Book

To God do I ascend.

Lo! over the mountain steeps

A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps
Beneath my feet;

A blackness inwardly brightening
With sullen heat,

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,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains?

I should answer, I should tell you,
66 From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,

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,
The musician, the sweet singer."

Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs, so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
"In the birds'-nests of the forests,
In the lodges of the beaver,

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;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
If still further you should ask me,
Saying, "Who was Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow.
"In the Vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,
Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.

And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.

*

"There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!"

Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,

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;-
Listen to these wild traditions,

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,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are sung or spoken ;-
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To this Song of Hiawatha !

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,
That in even savage bosoms

There are longings, yearnings, strivings,
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,

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
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos

Of the Here and the Hereafter;-
Stay and read this rude inscription,
Read this Song of Hiawatha!

I.

THE PEACE-PIPE.

ON the Mountains of the Prairie, 14
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.