PART II.
The Indian boy is fast asleep,
And dew on his wolf-skin gray,
Hath cried him weary long ago;
His little grey dog is moaning low,
And the big owl screams for day.
Poor lonely sleeping Indian boy,—
How wild are his fitful dreams?
—In mirth she comes; and sinking now
To the water-moon she seems.
A wolf is trotting in the brake,
All under the panthers’ limb;
But they have licked a fawn’s sweet blood,
And careless are grown of him.
Then darker grew the shadowy woods,
And bent with a crackling sound;
Shines through the dark the flashing foam
On the pebbled beach around.
Too late the warning loon has yell’d
To the shallow-wading crane;
For now the thunder blast is up,
And whirls the driving rain.
O, red girl of the sky-blue lake,
Look well to thy dancing bark;
The wind is loud, the wave is white,
And the breaking morn is dark;
The wind is loud, the wave is white,
Look well to thy slender oar:
The loon hath need of its wing of jet
To battle the might of the waves, that fret
Along to the foamy shore.
Alone, upon the frothy beach,
In the still and pleasant morn,
The Ottawa child is waiting yet,
But frightened and forlorn.
His eyes are red, his hair is wild;
He hath donned his wolf-skin gray;
His shivering dog is moaning low;
The child hath turned him round to go,—
He can no longer stay.
Yet once, with aching heart, he looks
To the isle of flowers again;
It seems a sleeping bank of green
Upon a silvery plain.
Within its shade, the voiceless swans
Are sailing two by two;
But never his eye can catch a glimpse
Of the maiden’s birch canoe;—
The bow-neck’d swans are all that move
Upon the silvery blue.
Turn home, heart-broken child! turn home;
That bark is in the deep;
And she has gone with the tinted shells
To their own green caves to sleep.
Her spirit owns a brighter isle
Than floats the moon below;
Where never the thunder-blast is heard,
She lists to the song of the scarlet bird,
And plays with the beautiful doe.
There! for this letter you owe me an oyster supper,—but if you will give me that beautiful engraving from Claude, hanging in your study, I will call the matter settled.