Meanwhile, whence comes it that among
These youthful maidens fresh and fair,
So joyous, with such laughing air,

Baptiste stands sighing, with silent tongue?
And yet the bride is fair and young!

Is it Saint Joseph would say to us all,
That love, o'er-hasty, precedeth a fall?
O no! for a maiden frail, I trow,
Never bore so lofty a brow!

What lovers! they give not a single caress!
To see them so careless and cold to-day,

These are grand people, one would say.

What ails Baptiste? what grief doth him oppress?

It is, that, half-way up the hill,
In yon cottage, by whose walls
Stand the cart-house and the stalls,
Dwelleth the blind orphan still,
Daughter of a veteran old;

And you must know, one year ago,
That Margaret, the young and tender,
Was the village pride and splendor,
And Baptiste her lover bold.
Love, the deceiver, them ensnared ;
For them the altar was prepared;
But alas! the summer's blight,
The dread disease that none can stay,
The pestilence that walks by night,
Took the young bride's sight away.

All at the father's stern command was changed; Their peace was gone, but not their love estranged.

Wearied at home, erelong the lover fled;
Returned but three short days ago,
The golden chain they round him throw,
He is enticed, and onward led

To marry Angela, and yet

Is thinking ever of Margaret.

Then suddenly a maiden cried,

Anna, Theresa, Mary, Kate!

Here comes the cripple Jane!" And by a fountain's side

A woman, bent and gray with years,
Under the mulberry-trees appears,

And all towards her run, as fleet
As had they wings upon their feet.

It is that Jane, the cripple Jane,
Is a soothsayer, wary and kind.
She telleth fortunes, and none complain.
She promises one a village swain,
Another a happy wedding-day,
And the bride a lovely boy straightway.
All comes to pass as she avers;
She never deceives, she never errs.

But for this once the village seer
Wears a countenance severe,

And from beneath her eyebrows thin and white
Her two eyes flash like cannons bright
Aimed at the bridegroom in waistcoat blue,
Who, like a statue, stands in view;
Changing color, as well he might,
When the beldame wrinkled and gray
Takes the young bride by the hand,

And, with the tip of her reedy wand
Making the sign of the cross, doth say :-
Thoughtless Angela, beware!

Lest, when thou weddest this false bride

groom,

AND by suffering worn and weary,
But beautiful as some fair angel yet,
Thus lamented Margaret,

In her cottage lone and dreary :

"He has arrived! arrived at last! Yet Jane has named him not these three days past;

Arrived! yet keeps aloof so far! And knows that of my night he is the star! Knows that long months I wait alone, benighted, And count the moments since he went away! Come! keep the promise of that happier day, That I may keep the faith to thee I plighted! What joy have I without thee? what delight? Grief wastes my life, and makes it misery; Day for the others ever, but for me

Forever night! forever night!
When he is gone 't is dark my soul is sad!
I suffer! O my God! come, make me glad.
When he is near, no thoughts of day intrude;
Day has blue heavens, but Baptiste has blue
eyes!

Within them shines for me a heaven of love,
A heaven all happiness, like that above,

No more of grief! no more of lassitude!
Earth I forget,-and heaven, and all distresses,
When seated by my side my hand he presses;
But when alone, remember all!
Where is Baptiste? he hears not when I call!
A branch of ivy, dying on the ground,

I need some bough to twine around!

In pity come! be to my suffering kind!
True love, they say, in grief doth more abound!
What then-when one is blind?

"Who knows? perhaps I am forsaken! Ah! woe is me! then bear me to my grave!

O God! what thoughts within me waken! Away! he will return! I do but rave!

He will return! I need not fear!
He swore it by our Saviour dear;
He could not come at his own will;
Is weary, or perhaps is ill!

Perhaps his heart, in this disguise,
Prepares for me some sweet surprise!

But some one comes! Though blind, my heart

"Hark! the joyous airs are ringing!
Sister, dost thou hear them singing?
How merrily they laugh and jest!
Would we were bidden with the rest!
I would don my hose of homespun gray,
And my doublet of linen striped and gay;
Perhaps they will come; for they do not wed
Till to-morrow at seven o'clock, it is said!"
"I know it!" answered Margaret;
Whom the vision, with aspect black as jet,
Mastered again; and its hand of ice
Held her heart crashed, as in a vice!

"Paul, be not sad! "T is a holiday;
To-morrow put on thy doublet gay!
But leave me now for a while alone."
Away, with a hop and a jump, went Paul,
And, as he whistled along the hall,
Entered Jane, the crippled crone.

"Holy Virgin! what dreadful heat! I am faint, and weary, and out of breath! But thou art cold,-art chill as death; My little friend! what ails thee, sweet?" Nothing! I heard them singing home the bride;

And, as I listened to the song,

I thought my turn would come erelong,
Thou knowest it is at Whitsuntide.
Thy cards forsooth can never lie,
To me such joy they prophesy,
Thy skill shall be vaunted far and wide
When they behold him at my side.
And poor Baptiste, what sayest thou?

It must seem long to him ;-methinks I see him now!

"The more I pray the more I love!

It is no sin, for God is on my side!"
It was enough; and Jane no more replied.

Now to all hope her heart is barred and cold;
But to deceive the beldame old
She takes a sweet, contented air;
Speak of foul weather or of fair,'
At every word the maiden smiles!
Thus the beguiler she beguiles;
So that, departing at the evening's close,
She says,
"She may be saved! she nothing
knows!"

Poor Jane, the cunning sorceress ! Now that thou wouldst, thou art no prophetess! This morning, in the fulness of thy heart, Thou wast so, far beyond thine art!

III.

Now rings the bell, nine times reverberating, And the white daybreak, stealing up the sky, Sees in two cottages two maidens waiting, How differently!

Queen of a day, by flatterers caressed,

The one puts on her cross and crown,
Decks with a huge bouquet her breast,
And flaunting, fluttering up and down,
Looks at herself, and cannot rest.

The other, blind, within her little room,
Has neither crown nor flower's perfume;
But in their stead for something gropes apart,
That in a drawer's recess doth lie,
And, 'neath her bodice of bright scarlet dye,
Convulsive clasps it to her heart.

The one, fantastic, light as air,
'Mid kisses ringing,

And joyous singing,

Forgets to say her morning prayer!

The other, with cold drops upon her brow,
Joins her two hands, and kneels upon the floor,
And whispers, as her brother opes the door,
O God! forgive me now!

And then the orphan, young and blind,
Conducted by her brother's hand,
Towards the church, through paths un-

scanned,

With tranquil air, her way doth wind. Odors of laurel, making her faint and pale, Round her at times exhale,

And in the sky as yet no sunny ray,
But brumal vapors gray.

Near that castle, fair to see,

Crowded with sculptures old, in every part,
Marvels of nature and of art,

And proud of its name of high degree,
A little chapel, almost bare

At the base of the rock, is builded there;
All glorious that it lifts aloof,
Above each jealous cottage roof,

Its sacred summit, swept by autumn gales,
And its blackened steeple high in air,
Round which the osprey screams and sails.

"Paul, lay thy noisy rattle by!"

Thus Margaret said. "Where are we? we ascend!"

"Yes; seest thou not our journey's end? Hearest not the osprey from the belfry cry?

The hideous bird, that brings ill luck, we know ! Dost thou remember when our father said,

The night we watched beside his bed, 'Odaughter, I am weak and low; Take care of Paul; feel that I am dying!" And thou, and he, and I, all fell to crying? Then on the roof the osprey screamed aloud; And here they brought our father in his shroud. There is his grave; there stands the cross we set; Why dost thou clasp me so, dear Margaret?

Come in! The bride will be here soon: Thou tremblest! O my God! thou art going to swoon!"

At length the bell,

With booming sound,

Sends forth, resounding round,

Its hymeneal peal o'er rock and down the dell.
It is broad day, with sunshine and with rain;
And yet the guests delay not long,
For soon arrives the bridal train,
And with it brings the village throng.

In sooth, deceit maketh no mortal gay,
For lo! Baptiste on this triumphant day,
Mute as an idiot, sad as yester-morning,
Thinks only of the beldame's words of warning.

And Angela thinks of her cross, I wis;
To be a bride is all! The pretty lisper

Feels her heart swell to hear all round her whis

Village girls in robes of snow
Follow, weeping as they go;
Nowhere was a smile that day,
No, ah no! for each one seemed to say: -

"The road should mourn and be veiled in gloom,
So fair a corpse shall leave its home!
Should mourn and should weep, ah, well-away!
So fair a corpse shall pass to-day!"

Sing them till the night expire!

Washerwomen old,

To the sound they beat,
Sing by rivers cold,

With uncovered heads and feet.
Let us by the fire
Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire.

Who by the fireside stands Stamps his feet and sings; But he who blows his hands Not so gay a carol brings. Let us by the fire Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

INTRODUCTION.

SHOULD you ask me, whence these stories!
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors 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,
"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 bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle !

"All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
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,
Saving, "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!