“I am sorry all of you were not with me this morning at daylight. To have recited my verse then would have been more appropriate,” she began.
However, what she recited was not so important, since always Mrs. Burton’s audiences heard her with thrilling interest. For one reason, the voice of the great actress was so beautiful and appealing. Like the great Sara Bernhardt she would have been able to stir her hearers both to laughter and tears by a mere recital of the alphabet, could she have spoken as Bernhardt did in a language unfamiliar to her listeners.
“This verse is a part of the Indian New Fire ceremony and seemed to me appropriate to our morning camp fire,” she explained.
Some vivid, charming quality appeared to be born anew in Polly O’Neill Burton each time she faced an audience, no matter how small and unimportant. This love of her work was perhaps the surest expression of her genius.
She now lifted her head, the color coming swiftly to her face, and pointing to the sun and then toward their own fire she spoke in a beautiful resonant voice:
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,
Become children of light, vigorous, active, sprightly;
Hasten clouds from the four world quarters,
Come snow in plenty, that water may abound when summer appears,
Come ice and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield abundantly,