H the long and dreary winter!
Oh the cold and cruel winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river;
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest

Fell, and could not rise from weakness.
Perished there from cold and hunger.

In his face a stony firmness,

On his brow the sweat of anguish

Started, but it froze and fell not. Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting

With his mighty bow of ash-tree,

With his quiver full of arrows,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Into the vast and vacant forest

On his snow-shoes strode he forward.

"Gitche Manito, the mighty!" Cried he with his face uplifted

In that bitter hour of anguish,
"Give your children food, O Father!
Give us food, or we must perish!
Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha!"
Through the far-resounding forest,
Through the forest vast and vacant
Rang that cry of desolation,
But there came no other answer
Than the echo of his crying,
Than the echo of the woodlands,
"MINNEHAHA! MINNEHAHA!”

All day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of summer,

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 loving 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
Calling to me from a distance!"
"No, my child!" said old Nokomis,
""Tis the night-wind in the pine-trees!"
"Look!" she said, "I see my father
Standing lonely at his doorway,
Beckoning to me from his wigwam
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, Far away amid the forest, Miles away among the mountains, Heard that sudden cry of anguish, Heard the voice of Minnehaha Calling to him in the darkness, "HIAWATHA! HIAWATHA!"

Over snow-fields waste and pathless,
Under snow-encumbered branches,
Homeward hurried Hiawatha,
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted,
Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing;
"Wahonowin! Wahonowin!

Would that I had perished for you,
Would that I were dead as you are!
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"
And he rushed into the wigwam,
Saw the old Nokomis slowly
Rocking to and fro and moaning,
Saw his lovely Minnehaha
Lying dead and cold before him,
And his bursting heart within him
Uttered such a cry of anguish,

That the forest moaned and shuddered,
That the very stars in heaven
Shook and trembled with his anguish.

Then he sat down still and speechless, On the bed of Minnehaha, At the feet of Laughing Water, At those willing feet, that never More would lightly run to meet him, Never more would lightly follow.

With both hands his face he covered,
Seven long days and nights he sat there,
As if in a swoon he sat there,
Speechless, motionless, unconscious
Of the daylight or the darkness.

Then they buried Minnehaha;
In the snow a grave they made her,
In the forest deep and darksome,
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
Clothed her in her richest garments,
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
Thus they buried Minnehaha.
And at night a fire was lighted,

On her grave four times was kindled,
For her soul upon its journey
To the Islands of the Blessed.
From his doorway Hiawatha
Saw it burning in the forest,
Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks;
From his sleepless bed uprising,
From the bed of Minnehaha,
Stood and watched it at the doorway,
That it might not be extinguished,
Might not leave her in the darkness.

"Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha;
Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!
Come not back again to labor,
Come not back again to suffer,
Where the Famine and the Fever
Wear the heart and waste the body,
Soon my task will be completed,
Soon your footsteps I shall follow
To the Islands of the Blessed,

To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

A

MIGHTY hand from an exhaustless urn Pours forth the never-ending Flood of Years Among the Nations. How the rushing waves Bear all before them! On their foremost edge, And there alone, is Life; the Present there Tosses and foams and fills the air with roar Of mingled noises. There are they who toil, And they who strive, and they who feast, and they Who hurry to and fro. The sturdy hindWoodman and delver with the spade-are there. And busy artisan beside his bench,

And pallid student with his written roll.

A moment on the mounting billow seen-
The flood sweeps over them and they are gone.
There groups of revelers, whose brows are twined
With roses, ride the topmost swell awhile,
And as they raise their flowing cups to touch
The clinking brim to brim, are whirled beneath
The waves and disappear. I hear the jar
Of beaten drums, and thunders that break forth
From cannon, where the advancing billow sends
Up to the sight long files of armed men,
That hurry to the charge through flame and smoke.
The torrent bears them under, whelmed and hid,
Slayer and slain, in heaps of bloody foam.
Down go the steed and rider; the plumed chief
Sinks with his followers; the head that wears
The imperial diadem goes down beside
The felon's with cropped ear and branded cheek.
A funeral train the torrent sweeps away,
Bearers and bier and mourners. By the bed
Of one who dies men gather sorrowing,
And women weep aloud; the floods roll on;
The wail is stifled, and the sobbing group
Borne under. Hark to that shrill, sudden shout—
The cry of an applauding multitude
Swayed by some loud-tongued orator who wields
The living mass as if he were its soul!
The waters choke the shout and all is still.

Lo, next, a kneeling crowd, and one who spreads
The hands in prayer! the engulfing wave o'ertakes
And swallows them and him. A sculptor wields
The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
To beauty; at his easel, eager-eyed,
A painter stands, and sunshine at his touch
Gathers upon the canvas, and life glows;
A poet, as he paces to and fro,

Murmurs his sounding lines. Awhile they ride
The advancing billow, till its tossing crest
Strikes them and flings them under while their tasks
Are yet unfinished. See a mother smile
On her young babe that smiles to her again—
The torrent wrests it from her arms; she shrieks,
And weeps, and midst her tears is carried down.

A beam like that of moonlight turns the spray
To glistening pearls; two lovers, hand in hand,
Rise on the billowy swell and fondly look
Into each other's eyes. The rushing flood
Flings them apart; the youth goes down; the maid
With hands outstretched in vain, and streaming eyes.
Waits for the next high wave to follow him.
An agéd man succeeds; his bending form
Sinks slowly; mingling with the sullen stream
Gleam the white locks and then are seen no more.

Lo, wider grows the stream; a sea-like flood
Saps earth's walled cities; massive palaces
Crumble before it; fortresses and towers
Dissolve in the swift waters; populous realms
Swept by the torrent, see their ancient tribes
Engulfed and lost, their very languages
Stifled and never to be uttered more.

I pause and turn my eyes, and, looking back,
Where that tumultuous flood has passed, I see
The silent Ocean of the Past, a waste

Of waters weltering over graves, its shores
Strewn with the wreck of fleets, where mast and hull
Drop away piecemeal; battlemented walls
Frown idly, green with moss, and temples stand
Unroofed, forsaken by the worshipers.
There lie memorial stones, whence time has gnawed
The graven legends, thrones of kings o'erturned,
The broken altars of forgotten gods,
Foundations of old cities and long streets
Where never fall of human feet is heard
Upon the desolate pavement. I behold
Dim glimmerings of lost jewels far within
The sleeping waters, diamonds, sardonyx,
Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite,
Once glittering at the banquet on fair brows
That long ago were dust; and all around,
Strewn on the waters of that silent sea,
Are withering bridal wreaths, and glossy locks
Shorn from fair brows by loving hands, and scrolls
O'erwritten-haply with fond words of love
And vows of friendship-and fair pages flung
Fresh from the printer's engine. There they lie
A moment and then sink away from sight.

I look and the quick tears are in my eyes,
For I behold, in every one of these,
A blighted hope, a separate history
Of human sorrow, telling of dear ties
Suddenly broken, dreams of happiness
Dissolved in air, and happy days, too brief,
That sorrowfully ended; and I think
How painfully the poor heart must have beat
In bosoms without number, as the blow
Was struck that slew their hope or broke their peace.