DAWENDINE
There’s a spirit on the river, there’s a ghost upon the shore,
They are chanting, they are singing through the starlight evermore,
As they steal amid the silence,
And the shadows of the shore.
You can hear them when the Northern candles light the Northern sky,
Those pale, uncertain candle flames, that shiver, dart and die,
Those dead men’s icy finger tips,
Athwart the Northern sky.
You can hear the ringing war cry of a long forgotten brave
Echo through the midnight forest, echo o’er the midnight wave,
And the Northern lanterns tremble
At the war cry of that brave.
And you hear a voice responding, but in soft and tender song;
It is Dawendine’s spirit singing, singing all night long;
And the whisper of the night wind
Bears afar her Spirit song.
And the wailing pine trees murmur with their voice attuned to hers,
Murmur when they ’rouse from slumber as the night wind through them stirs;
And you listen to their legend,
And their voices blend with hers.
There was feud and there was bloodshed near the river by the hill;
And Dawendine listened, while her very heart stood still:
Would her kinsman or her lover
Be the victim by the hill?
Who would be the great unconquered? who come boasting how he dealt
Death? and show his rival’s scalplock fresh and bleeding at his belt.
Who would say, “O Dawendine!
Look upon the death I dealt?”
And she listens, listens, listens—till a war-cry rends the night,
Cry of her victorious lover, monarch he of all the height;
And his triumph wakes the horrors,
Kills the silence of the night.