Anpetusapa hides her woe
Until her husband and her foe
Have left the lodge and gone from sight.
Then with a tearless eye and bright,
She gazes madly round the place
Where every comfort bears the trace
Of wifely labor wrought with pain,
Of woman's love that lives in vain.
Here moccasins lie with bead-work gay;
Here on the wall the breezes sway
The music-breathing flute,
Whose lips are dry and mute,
While she who once inspired its tone
Now sits despairing and alone.
The very curls of smoke that rise
And mingle with the morning skies,
Are tokens of the duties done
Beneath the red eye of the rising sun.
Awhile she sits in cruel thought, Till, with her anguish overwrought,
She flies to him who sweetly bears
The image of her faithless god,
And on each infant feature wears
The smiling hopes on which he trod.
Convulsively she clasps her child,
Whose love, alone left undefiled,
Is not enough to nerve her soul
Beneath its crushing weight of dole.
She listens to the roaring water,
Whose voice she heard in music grand
When she was but the old chief's daughter,
When love such wondrous fortunes planned;
And ruthless phantoms of the past
Across her mind are flitting fast,
Each with a keen, envenomed dart
That poisons brain and tortures heart.
With breath too quick to lift a sigh,
With marble firmness on her brow,
With glassy wildness in her eye,
She seeks the river's margin now.
She springs into a birch canoe,
All beaded with the morning dew,
And clasping close her mother's pride,
Soon gains the middle of the tide.
O hark! thou selfish one who gave
Embrace more treacherous than the wave:
Does not her song which mounts the air
Reproach thee with its grand despair?
Why dost thou hurry to the river?
Why dost thou call, why dost thou shiver, While she whom thou hast driven away
Is bold amidst the chilly spray?
What good is all thy vain remorse?
Thinkst thou from jaws of death to force
A sacrifice so lightly thrust
Upon the altar of thy lust?
A host like thee could nothing urge
To meet one tone of her sad dirge:
My heart cannot live without loving;
My heart cannot give up its own;
No more will I linger with sorrow,
But follow the joys that have flown;
With Death I will rest me to-morrow
On a kind, dreamless bed of stone.
I fear not the rush of the water,
For me all its terrors are vain;
It cannot bring less than gladness,
For it banishes all my pain;
I will sink with my burden of sadness
And mix with the earth again.
My baby, my darling, my blossom,
Nor anguish nor falsehood shall know;
Together we cleave the wild billow—
Unfaltering together we go
To rest on the same rocky pillow,
To slumber and mingle below.
Plunging on the sunlit stream,
The frail canoe, with trembling leaps, Hurries toward the mists that gleam
To veil the awful steeps.
What need has she for any veil?
Despairing eyes will never quail!
See, now upon the glowing crest,
Where clouds of spray beneath her lie,
She clasps her boy upon her breast,
She gazes on the cloudless sky,
And in its blue depth seems to see
Death, robed in peaceful purity;
Then down into the boiling tomb
That makes for her the happiest doom.
How strange that peace should thus be found
Amid such tumult-breathing sound!
To leap from life and light, and find
A darkness sweeter to the mind!
Long shall the mists of morning show
The spirit of her who long ago
Wrapped them round her wearily—
A victim of love and treachery.
Long shall her mournful death-song find
An echo in the moaning wind;
Long shall Dahkota legend bind
That echo with the roaring falls,
The ancient, foam-crowned, giant falls,
Whose voice so oft hath given
The welcome of its watery halls,
That lead the soul, when the Great Spirit calls,
To the hunting-grounds of heaven.
And though a child of the forest dark Weary of life would here embark,
As to a portal hither comes,—
And yet who may not pass this way
Into eternal joy and day,—
The water hides and soon benumbs
The sorrow, and the cadence deep
Becomes a lullaby to hush
The spirit to its endless sleep
Beneath the surging rush,
Beneath the shrouding spray,
Where the tireless waters sweep
To their wild, unpausing leap—
Then fly to the South away!
The flood is cold, but the heart is bold
When the future that lives new sorrow gives;
And within the chamber halls
Of the grand and solemn falls
May be found a sleep so sweet and deep
That its darkness never palls,
While ages pass with silent creep.
Time hath no tooth to tear
The heart whose pulse is dead,
And sorrow may live in the air
But not in the river-bed!
I ween all peacefully there
Is pillowed forever the head
Of a woman whose heart was fair,
Though her cheeks were dusky red.