The Song of Hiawatha   ::   Longfellow Henry Wadsworth

If you listen to his counsels,

You will multiply and prosper;

If his warnings pass unheeded,

You will fade away and perish!

"Bathe now in the stream before you,

Wash the war-paint from your faces,

Wash the blood-stains from your fingers,

Bury your war-clubs and your weapons,

Break the red stone from this quarry,

Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes,

Take the reeds that grow beside you,

Deck them with your brightest feathers,

Smoke the calumet together,

And as brothers live henceforward!"

Then upon the ground the warriors

Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin,

Threw their weapons and their war-gear,

Leaped into the rushing river,

Washed the war-paint from their faces.

Clear above them flowed the water,

Clear and limpid from the footprints

Of the Master of Life descending;

Dark below them flowed the water,

Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson,

As if blood were mingled with it!

From the river came the warriors,

Clean and washed from all their war-paint;

On the banks their clubs they buried,

Buried all their warlike weapons.

Gitche Manito, the mighty,

The Great Spirit, the creator,

Smiled upon his helpless children!

And in silence all the warriors

Broke the red stone of the quarry,

Smoothed and formed it into Peace-Pipes,

Broke the long reeds by the river,

Decked them with their brightest feathers,

And departed each one homeward,

While the Master of Life, ascending,

Through the opening of cloud-curtains,

Through the doorways of the heaven,

Vanished from before their faces,

In the smoke that rolled around him,

The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe!



II

he Four Winds

"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!"

Cried the warriors, cried the old men,

When he came in triumph homeward

With the sacred Belt of Wampum,

From the regions of the North-Wind,

From the kingdom of Wabasso,

From the land of the White Rabbit.

He had stolen the Belt of Wampum

From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa,

From the Great Bear of the mountains,

From the terror of the nations,

As he lay asleep and cumbrous

On the summit of the mountains,

Like a rock with mosses on it,

Spotted brown and gray with mosses.