The Song of Hiawatha   ::   Longfellow Henry Wadsworth

To his ear there came a murmur

As of waves upon a sea-shore,

As of far-off tumbling waters,

As of winds among the pine-trees;

And he felt upon his forehead

Blows of little airy war-clubs,

Wielded by the slumbrous legions

Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,

As of some one breathing on him.

At the first blow of their war-clubs,

Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind;

At the second blow they smote him,

Motionless his paddle rested;

At the third, before his vision

Reeled the landscape Into darkness,

Very sound asleep was Kwasind.

So he floated down the river,

Like a blind man seated upright,

Floated down the Taquamenaw,

Underneath the trembling birch-trees,

Underneath the wooded headlands,

Underneath the war encampment

Of the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies.

There they stood, all armed and waiting,

Hurled the pine-cones down upon him,

Struck him on his brawny shoulders,

On his crown defenceless struck him.

"Death to Kwasind!" was the sudden

War-cry of the Little People.

And he sideways swayed and tumbled,

Sideways fell into the river,

Plunged beneath the sluggish water

Headlong, as an otter plunges;

And the birch canoe, abandoned,

Drifted empty down the river,

Bottom upward swerved and drifted:

Nothing more was seen of Kwasind.

But the memory of the Strong Man

Lingered long among the people,

And whenever through the forest

Raged and roared the wintry tempest,

And the branches, tossed and troubled,

Creaked and groaned and split asunder,

"Kwasind!" cried they; "that is Kwasind!

He is gathering in his fire-wood!"



XIX

The Ghosts

Never stoops the soaring vulture

On his quarry in the desert,

On the sick or wounded bison,

But another vulture, watching

From his high aerial look-out,

Sees the downward plunge, and follows;

And a third pursues the second,

Coming from the invisible ether,

First a speck, and then a vulture,

Till the air is dark with pinions.