XX. The Famine. O THE long and dreary Winter! Hardly from his buried wigwam In the ghastly, gleaming forest Fell, and could not rise from weakness, Perished there from cold and hunger. O the famine and the fever! All the earth was sick and famished; Hungry was the air around them, And the hungry stars in heaven Into Hiawatha's wigwam Came two other guests, as silent Did not parley at the doorway, And the foremost said: "Behold me! I am Famine, Bukadawin!" And the other said: "Behold me! I am Fever, Ahkosewin!" And the lovely Minnehaha Shuddered as they looked upon her, Cried he with his face uplifted For my dying Minnehaha!" Through the far-resounding forest, But there came no other answer All day long roved Hiawatha Through the shadow of whose thickets, Of that ne'er-forgotten Summer, He had brought his young wife homeward From the land of the Dacotahs; 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 "I will follow you, my husband!" 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 "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, 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! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" And the desolate Hiawatha, Miles away among the mountains, |