The Song of Hiawatha   ::   Longfellow Henry Wadsworth

"Then a voice was heard, a whisper,

Coming from the starry distance,

Coming from the empty vastness,

Low, and musical, and tender;

And the voice said: 'O Osseo!

O my son, my best beloved!

Broken are the spells that bound you,

All the charms of the magicians,

All the magic powers of evil;

Come to me; ascend, Osseo!

"'Taste the food that stands before you:

It is blessed and enchanted,

It has magic virtuesin it,

It will change you to a spirit.

All your bowls and all your kettles

Shall be wood and clay no longer;

But the bowls be changed to wampum,

And the kettles shall be silver;

They shall shine like shells of scarlet,

Like the fire shall gleam and glimmer.

"'And the women shall no longer

Bear the dreary doom of labor,

But be changed to birds, and glisten

With the beauty of the starlight,

Painted with the dusky splendors

Of the skies and clouds of evening!'

"What Osseo heard as whispers,

What as words he comprehended,

Was but music to the others,

Music as of birds afar off,

Of the whippoorwill afar off,

Of the lonely Wawonaissa

Singing in the darksome forest.

"Then the lodge began to tremble,

Straight began to shake and tremble,

And they felt it rising, rising,

Slowly through the air ascending,

From the darkness of the tree-tops

Forth into the dewy starlight,

Till it passed the topmost branches;

And behold! the wooden dishes

All were changed to shells of scarlet!

And behold! the earthen kettles

All were changed to bowls of silver!

And the roof-poles of the wigwam

Were as glittering rods of silver,

And the roof of bark upon them

As the shining shards of beetles.

"Then Osseo gazed around him,

And he saw the nine fair sisters,

All the sisters and their husbands,

Changed to birds of various plumage.

Some were jays and some were magpies,

Others thrushes, others blackbirds;

And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,

Perked and fluttered all their feathers,

Strutted in their shining plumage,

And their tails like fans unfolded.

"Only Oweenee, the youngest,

Was not changed, but sat in silence,

Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly,

Looking sadly at the others;

Till Osseo, gazing upward,

Gave another cry of anguish,

Such a cry as he had uttered

By the oak-tree in the forest.