The Song of Hiawatha   ::   Longfellow Henry Wadsworth

And whenever Hiawatha

Came from fishing or from hunting,

When the evening meal was ready,

And the food had been divided,

Gliding from their darksome corner,

Came the pallid guests, the strangers,

Seized upon the choicest portions

Set aside for Laughing Water,

And withoutrebuke or question

Flitted back among the shadows.

Never once had Hiawatha

By a word or look reproved them;

Never once had old Nokomis

Made a gesture of impatience;

Never once had Laughing Water

Shown resentment at the outrage.

All had they endured in silence,

That the rights of guest and stranger,

That the virtue of free-giving,

By a look might not be lessened,

By a word might not be broken.

Once at midnight Hiawatha,

Ever wakeful, ever watchful,

In the wigwam, dimly lighted

By the brands that still were burning,

By the glimmering, flickering firelight

Heard a sighing, oft repeated,

From his couch rose Hiawatha,

From his shaggy hides of bison,

Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain,

Saw the pallid guests, the shadows,

Sitting upright on their couches,

Weeping in the silent midnight.

And he said: "O guests! why is it

That your hearts are so afflicted,

That you sob so in the midnight?

Has perchance the old Nokomis,

Has my wife, my Minnehaha,

Wronged or grieved you by unkindness,

Failed in hospitable duties?"

Then the shadows ceased from weeping,

Ceased from sobbing and lamenting,

And they said, with gentle voices:

"We are ghosts of the departed,

Souls of those who once were with you.

From the realms of Chibiabos

Hither have we come to try you,

Hither have we come to warn you.

"Cries of grief and lamentation

Reach us in the Blessed Islands;

Cries of anguish from the living,

Calling back their friends departed,

Sadden us with useless sorrow.

Therefore have we come to try you;

No one knows us, no one heeds us.

We are but a burden to you,

And we see that the departed

Have no place among the living.

"Think of this, O Hiawatha!

Speak of it to all the people,

That henceforward and forever

They no more with lamentations

Sadden the souls of the departed

In the Islands of the Blessed.