_WINONA_
_A DAKOTA LEGEND_
_AND OTHER POEMS_
_BY
CAPTAIN E. L. HUGGINS
2d Cavalry U. S. Army_
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
27 West Twenty-third St. 27 King William St., Strand
Knickerbocker Press
1890
COPYRIGHT, 1890
BY
ELI L. HUGGINS.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
CONTENTS.
Transcriber’s Note: Incorrect page numbering in the original has been
amended here.
PAGE
WINONA, A DAKOTA LEGEND.
PROEM. 3
PART I. 9
PART II. 20
PART III. 33
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
TO A YOUNG MAN 43
TELL ME, DEAR BIRD 45
PERDITA 47
STANZAS TO ⸺ 52
LOVE’S TRIBUTE 55
THE LITTLE SHEPHERDESS.—PASTORELLE 57
A FAREWELL 58
TO A FICKLE FAIR ONE 59
TO THE SAME 59
THE PALACE OF REPOSE 60
MOODS 63
TO ⸺ 74
TO ⸺ 76
TO THE SAME 76
TO THE SAME 76
TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS.
IF MY VERSES HAD WINGS LIKE A BIRD.—HUGO 79
’TWIXT SLEEP AND WAKING.—PROSPER BLANCHEMAIN 80
WHITE SWAN SAILING.—FROM THE RUSSIAN, 81
THE ROSES OF SAADI.—DESBORDES-VALMORE, 84
ROSE-BUDS.—BÉRANGER 85
THE BIRD I WAIT FOR.—MOREAU 87
VISIONS.—DE MUSSET 89
THE FISHERMAN’S BRIDAL.—DELAVIGNE 92
YOU HAD MY WHOLE HEART.—DESBORDES-VALMORE 95
ART.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 97
BARCAROLLE.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 100
SHADOWS.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 103
SONNET: OU VONT ILS?—SULLY PRUDHOMME, 113
THE GAY CASHIER.—ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH 114
THE RAVAGES OF TIME.—SCARRON 115
HALLUCINATION.—FROM THE FRENCH.
I. 116
II. 117
III. 117
IV. IN THE GROVE 118
TO MY CRITICS.—DE MUSSET 119
THE YOUTH AND THE OLD MAN.—FLORIAN 121
THE CATHEDRAL BELL AND ITS RIVAL.—IRIARTE 123
BLUE EYES AND BLACK EYES.—IMITATED FROM ANDALUSIAN COPLAS.
I. 125
II. 126
COMPLAINT TO THE VIRGIN.—FROM A CUBAN POETESS 128
THE CRUCIFIXION. OLD FRENCH SONNET 132
FROM THE SPANISH 133
THE BOOK OF LIFE.—LAMARTINE 134
MEMORIAL DAY AND OTHER POEMS. DEDICATED TO THE G. A. R.
TWENTY YEARS AGO. WRITTEN FOR MEMORIAL DAY, 1885 137
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141
THE PRISONER’S DREAM 142
HOW OFT A SENTRY SAD AND LONE 143
FROM COPLAS OF AN ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER 144
FROM THE SAME 145
THE GLORY OF A SPANISH DRAGOON.—FROM THE SAME 146
WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915 148
TWENTY-FIVE SONNETS.
TO ⸺ 153
POESY 154
THE ROSE 155
TO A FAIR SANTA BARBARAN 156
LA DIVA 157
TO A HAPPY LOVER 158
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I. 159
II. 159
THREE SONNETS IN MEMORIAM.
I. DESPAIR—THE ABYSS 161
II. QUESTIONING 161
III. CONSOLATION 162
IN MEMORY OF D. G. R. 163
IN MEMORY OF JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATTOMIE. INSCRIBED
TO JOHN J. INGALLS.
I. 164
II. 165
III. 165
OUR LOST ONES 167
THE OCEAN OF THE PAST 168
EVIL DAYS 169
ENVY AND SLANDER. TO N. N. M. 170
TRUE FREEDOM. TO J. F. F. 171
“SOCIETY” 172
THE STAGNANT POOL 173
THE MAN WITH THE MUCK RAKE 174
IMMORTALITY 175
TO A YOUNG ARTIST 176
WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND
WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND.
PROEM.
How changed, fair Minnetonka, is thy face
Since first I saw thee in thy pristine grace.
Electric lights fantastically glow,
Swarming like fire-flies on the shores where long,
Through countless summer nights a vanished throng,
Only the Indian camp-fire flickered low.
The odor of the baleful cigarette
Assails us now, where the mild calumet
Around the circle like a censer swung.
The notes of Strauss intoxicate the air,
And dainty feet in cadence twinkle there,
Where in rude strains the warriors’ deeds were sung,
And where the Indian lover’s plaintive flute
Lured to the trysting-place the dusky maid.
Discreetly hidden in the sylvan shade,
The Anglomaniac comes to press his suit,
And Patrick, too, out for a holiday,
Strolls with his Bridget here _en dimanché_,
And softly whispers in his charmer’s ear
The same old tale, to lovers ever dear.
The rustling leaves, the waves, the mating bird,
Sing the same songs the Indian maiden heard.
Save a few stately names, the vanished race
Whose dust we daily trample leave no trace
Or monument. None who that race have known
Ere poisoned by the vices of our own,
Deem it ignoble; but the white man’s breath,
To him a besom of consuming death,
Sweeps him like ashes from his natal hearth,
E’en as one day some race of stronger birth
Will sweep our children’s children from the earth.
More noxious than the fabled upas tree,
We blight his virtues first, and then with scorn
Repel the hands extended once to save
Our exiled fathers, fleeing o’er the wave.
Yet in his deepest fall, the warrior, born
Of warrior lineage fetterless and free,
Retains unquenched in his unyielding soul
A secret flame in spite of all control.
He brooks no slavish, ignominious toil,
By scourger driven to till the white man’s soil.
Chained in Plutonian caverns far from day,
His spirit swiftly chafes its bars away;
Or by his own impatient hand released,
With rapture bounds as to a marriage feast.
Wealth, pomp, and power ne’er his soul affect;
Still unabashed he stands, unmoved, erect,
His blanket draped, albeit not too clean,
About him with a Roman consul’s mien,
And in the white light of a throne his eye
Would meet, nor quail, the eye of majesty.
His own war-eagle to the sun that soared,
Gave back with eye undimmed its fiery glare,
And sported with the speaking lightnings where
The Thunder-Birds[1] along the tempest roared;
Or swept the plain, but saw no Indian slave
From the Pacific to Atlantic wave.
Fair Minnetonka, thou art changed, and yet
I know not if ’twere matter for regret.
Thou wast a maid untried, with yielding heart,
With flowing hair, and ample sheltering arms,
And unabashed contours, whose rosy charms
Were all untrammelled by the hand of art,
And eyes of dreamy mystery, wherein
E’en then thy triumphs dimly were foreseen;
A worldly-wise and queenly woman now,
Adorned with spoil of many victories,
And flush of further conquest on thy brow;
Jewels cannot thy native charms enhance,
Nor can thy robes, too tightly laced perchance,
The matchless beauty of thy form disguise.
Through every change, by every tongue confessed,
Peerless amid thy sisters East or West;
Like her of whom the master-singer wrote,
“Age cannot wither her nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.”
Thus float
My wandering thoughts, as on the balcony
I sit alone bathed in the moonlight pale,
And musing thus the scene changed suddenly:
Hotel and cottage vanished; to the shore
The prairie sloped a green unbroken floor.
Eight lustrums back, through rosy summers fled,
Adown a dwindling vista far I sped,
A careless youth; again my hoary head
Bloomed with the sunny wealth of twenty years.
A day came back, a day without compeers,
When with a bright companion long since dead,
In my canoe I flitted o’er the lake,
And our swift paddles scattered pearly tears
Upon the smiling ripples in our wake.
She, my companion, was a little maid
Of somewhat rustic garb, of English speech,
Yet something in her accents quaint and rich,
And the warm tinge upon her cheek, betrayed
The mingling crimson of a darker shade,—
Her kinship to the remnant lingering still,
Whose cone-shaped lodges picturesquely stood,
Dotting the hither base of yonder hill,
Like late leaves clinging, spite of growing chill,
Upon the boughs of a November wood.
Changing our mood, we idly drifted there,
Two happy children in a cradling shell
Poised ’twixt two azure vaults; the mystic spell
Of Indian summer brooded in the air,
Filling with human love and sympathy
E’en things inanimate; the earth and sky
Leaned to each other, and the rocks and trees,
Like brothers, seemed sharing our reveries.
“Tell me some legend of the lake,” I cried,
“For in a spot that breathes on every side
Such air of poesy, whose influence
Subdues with such a charm our every sense,
How many loving hearts have loved and died!
How many souls as lofty and intense
As those whose names throughout the whole world ring,
In the high songs the olden minstrels sing!
Who hears those voices e’en but for a day,
The sound remains a part of him alway:
Penelope the constant; Hero sweet;
Briseis weeping at Achilles’ feet;
Andromeda by wingèd Perseus found—
Bright blossom to the sea-girt rock fast bound;
The Lesbian queen of song, but passion’s slave,
Who quenched her burning torch beneath the wave;
Helen, whose beauty, like a fatal brand,
Lit up the towers of Troy o’er sea and land;
And Juliet, swaying at her window’s height,
What slender lily in the wan moonlight.”
“I do not know,” the little maid replied,
“The names of which you speak, but ere she died
My mother told me many stories old,
Some joyous and some sad, of warriors bold,
And spirits, haunting forest, plain, and stream.
Each had its god, and creatures of strange form,
Half beast, half human; all these figures seem
Mingling away in a fantastic swarm,
Dim as the faces of a last year’s dream,
Or motes that mingle in a slant sunbeam.
The legends vanish too; among them all
This one alone, distinctly I recall.”
The tale she told me then I now rehearse,
Set in a frame of rude, unpolished verse.
PART I.
Winona,[2] first-born daughter, was the name
Of a Dakota girl who, long ago,
Dwelt with her people here unknown to fame.
Sweet word, Winona, how my heart and lips
Cling to that name (my mother’s was the same
Ere her form faded into death’s eclipse),
Cling lovingly, and loth to let it go.
All arts that unto savage life belong
She knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game.
From crippling fashions free, her well-knit frame
At fifteen summers was mature and strong.
She pitched the tipi,[3] dug the tipsin[4] roots,
Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits.
Fearless and self-reliant, she could go
Across the prairie on a starless night;
She speared the fish while in his wildest flight,
And almost like a warrior drew the bow.
Yet she was not all hardness: the keen glance,
Lighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance
Betrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose
O’er the weird circle of the midnight dance,
Through all the gamut ran of human woes,
Passion, and joy. A woman’s love she had
For ornament; on gala days was clad
In garments of the softest doeskin fine,
With shells about her neck; moccasins neat
Were drawn, like gloves, upon her little feet,
Adorned with scarlet quills of porcupine.
Innocent of the niceties refined
That to the toilet her pale sisters bind,
Yet much the same beneath the outer rind,
She was, though all unskilled in bookish lore,
A sound, sweet woman to the very core.
Winona’s uncle, and step-father too,
Was all the father that she ever knew;
By the Absarakas[5] her own was slain
Before her memory could his face retain.
Two bitter years his widow mourned him dead,
And then his elder brother she had wed.
None loved Winona’s uncle; he was stern
And harsh in manner, cold and taciturn,
And none might see, without a secret fear,
Those thin lips ever curling to a sneer.
And yet he was of note and influence
Among the chieftains; true he rarely lent
More than his presence in the council tent,
And when he rose to speak disdained pretence
Of arts rhetoric, but his few words went
Straight and incisive to the question’s core,
And rarely was his counsel overborne.
The Raven was the fitting name he bore,
And though his winters wellnigh reached threescore,
Few of his tribe excelled him in the chase.
A warrior of renown, but never wore
The dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn
The vanities and follies of his race.
I said the Raven was beloved by none;
But no, among the elders there was one
Who often sought him, and the two would walk
Apart for hours, and converse alone.
The gossips, marvelling much what this might mean,
Whispered that they at midnight had been seen
Far from the village wrapped in secret talk.
They seemed in truth an ill-assorted brace,
But Nature oft in Siamese bond unites,
By some strange tie, the farthest opposites.
Gray Cloud was oily, plausible, and vain,
A conjurer with subtle scheming brain;
Too corpulent and clumsy for the chase,
His lodge was still provided with the best,
And though sometimes but a half welcome guest,
He took his dish and spoon to every feast.[6]
Priestcraft and leechcraft were combined in him,
Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven,
Almost since man from Paradise was driven;
Padding with pompous phrases worn and old
Their scanty esoteric science dim,
And gravely selling, at their weight in gold,
Placebos colored to their patients’ whim.
Man’s noblest mission here too oft is made,
In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade.
Holy the task to comfort and console
The tortured body and the sin-sick soul,
But pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed,
Are turned too oft to instruments of greed.
The conjurer claimed to bear a mission high:
Mysterious omens of the earth and sky
He knew to read; his medicine could find
In time of need the buffalo, and bind
In sleep the senses of the enemy.
Perhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat,
And yet dissimulation and deceit
Oozed from his form obese at every pore.
Skilled by long practice in the priestly art,
To chill with superstitious fear the heart,
And versed in all the legendary lore,
He knew each herb and root that healing bore;
But lest his flock might grow as wise as he,
Disguised their use with solemn mummery.
When all the village wrapped in slumber lay,
His midnight incantations often fell,
His chant now weirdly rose, now sank away,
As o’er some dying child he cast his spell.
And sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran—
Magnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole
Linking the body to the wavering soul;
And swifter came his breath, as if to fan
The feeble life spark, and his finger tips
Were to the brow of pain like angel lips.
No wonder if in moments such as these
He half believed in his own deities,
And thought his sacred rattle could compel
The swarming powers unseen to serve him well.
The Raven lay one evening in his tent
With his accustomed crony at his side;
Around their heads a graceful aureole
Of smoke curled upward from the scarlet bowl
Of Gray Cloud’s pipe with willow bark supplied.
Winona’s thrifty mother came and went,
Her form with household cares and burdens bent,
Fresh fuel adds, and stirs the boiling pot.
Meanwhile the young Winona, half reclined,
Plies her swift needle, that resource refined
For woman’s leisure, whatsoe’er her lot,
The kingly palace or the savage cot.
The cronies smoked without a sign or word,
Passing the pipe sedately to and fro;
Only a distant wail of hopeless woe,
A mother mourning for her child, was heard,
And Gray Cloud moved, as though the sound had stirred
Some dusty memory; still that bitter wail,
Rachel’s despairing cry without avail,
That beats the brazen firmament in vain,
Since the first mother wept o’er Abel slain.
At length the conjurer’s lips the silence broke,
Softly at first as to himself he spoke,
Till warmed by his own swarming fancies’ brood
He poured the strain almost in numbers rude.
THE COMBAT BETWEEN THE THUNDER-BIRDS AND THE WATER-DEMONS.
Gray Cloud shall not be as other men,
Dull clods that move and breathe a day or two,
Ere other clods shall bury them from view.
Tempest and sky have been my home, and when
I pass from earth I shall find welcome there.
Sons of the Thunder-Bird my playmates were,
Ages ago[7] (the tallest oak to-day
In all the land was but a grass blade then).
Reared with such brethren, breathing such an air,
My spirit grew as tall and bold as they;
We tossed the ball and flushed the noble prey
O’er happy plains from human footsteps far;
And when our high chief’s voice to arm for war
Rang out in tones that rent the morning sky,
None of the band exulted more than I.
A god might gaze and tremble at the sight
Of our array that turned the day to night;
With bow and shield and flame-tipped arrows all,
Rushing together at our leader’s call,
Like storm clouds sweeping round a mountain height.
The lofty cliffs our warlike muster saw,
Hard by the village of great Wabashaw,[8]
Where through a lake the Mississippi flows;
Far o’er the dwelling of our ancient foes,
The hated Water-Demon[9] and his sons,
Cold, dark and deep the sluggish current runs.
Up from their caverns swarming, when they heard
The rolling signal of the Thunder-Bird,
The Water-Demon and his sons arose,
And answered back the challenge of their foes.
With horns tumultuous clashing like a herd
Of warring elks that struggle for the does,
They lashed the wave to clouds of spray and foam,
Through which their forms uncouth, like buffaloes
Seen dimly through a morning mist, did loom,
Or isles at twilight rising from the shore.
Though we were thirty, they at least fourscore,
We rushed upon them, and a midnight pall
Over the seething lake our pinions spread,
’Neath which our gleaming arrows thickly sped,
As shooting stars that in the rice-moon fall.
Rent by our beating wings the cloud-waves swung
In eddies round us, and our leader’s roar
Smote peal on peal, and from their bases flung
The rocks that towered along the trembling shore.
A Thunder-Bird—alas, my chosen friend,
But even so a warrior’s life should end,—
A Thunder-Bird was stricken; his bright beak,
Cleaving the tumult like a lightning streak,
Smote with a fiery hiss the watery plain;
His upturned breast, where gleamed one fleck of red,
His sable wings, one moment wide outspread,
Blackened the whirlpool o’er his sinking head.
The Water-Demon’s sons by scores were slain
By our swift arrows falling like the rain;
With yells of rage they sank beneath the wave
That ran all redly now, but could not save.
We asked not mercy, mercy never gave;
Our flaming darts lit up the farthest caves,
Fathoms below the reach of deepest line;
Our cruel spears, taller than mountain pine,
Mingled their life blood with the ruddy wave.
The combat ceased, the Thunder-Birds had won.
The Water-Demon with one favorite son
Fled from the carnage and escaped our wrath.
The vapors, thinly curling from the shore,
Faint musky odors to our nostrils bore.
The air was stilled, the silence of the dead;
The sun, just starting on his downward path,
A rosy mantle o’er the prairie shed,
Save where, like vultures, ominous and still,
We clustered close, on sullen wings outspread;
And sometimes, with a momentary chill,
A giant shadow swept o’er plain and hill,—
A Thunder-Bird careering overhead,
Seeking the track by which the foe had fled.
While thus we hovered motionless, the sun
Adown the west his punctual course had run,
When lo, two shining points far up the stream
That split the prairie with a silver seam,—
The fleeing Water-Demon and his son;
Like icicles they glittered in the beam
Still struggling up from the horizon’s rim.
His sleeping anger kindled at the sight,
Our leader’s eyes glowed like a flaming brand.
Thrilled by one impulse, all our sable band
Dove through the gathering shadows of the night
On wings outshaken for a headlong flight.
Anger, revenge, but more than all the thirst,
The glorious emulation to be first,
Stung me like fire, and filled each quivering plume.
With tenfold speed our sharp beaks cleft the gloom,
A swarm of arrows singing to the mark,
We hissed to pierce the foe ere yet ’twas dark.
Still up the stream the Water-Demons fled,
Their bodies glowed like fox-fire far ahead;
But every moment saw the distance close
Between our thirsting spear-heads and our foes.
Louder the blast our buzzing pinions made
Than mighty forest in a whirlwind swayed;
The giant cliffs of Redwing speeding back,
Like spectres melting from a cloudy wrack,
Melted from view in our dissolving track.
Kaposia’s village, clustered on the shore,
With sound of snapping poles and tipis riven,
Vanished like swan’s-down by a tempest driven.
Stung by our flight, the keen air smote us sore
As ragged hailstones; on, still on, we strained,
And fast and faster on the chase we gained,
But neck and neck the fierce pursuit remained,
Till close ahead we saw the rocky walls
O’er which the mighty river plunging falls,[10]
And at their base the Water-Demons lay:
The panting chase at last had turned to bay.
Then thrilled my nerves with more than mortal strength;
A breath of Deity was in the burst
That bore me out a goodly lance’s length
To meet the Water-Demon’s son accurst.
His evil horn clanged hollow on my shield
Just as my spear transfixed him through and through;
A moment towering o’er the foam he reeled,
Then sank beneath the roaring falls from view.
A dying yell that haunts me yet he gave,
And as he fell the crippled water coiled
About him like a wounded snake, and boiled,
leashing itself to madness o’er his grave.
We knew not where the parent Demon fled;
None of our spears might pierce his ancient mail,
Welded with skill demoniac scale on scale.
Some watery realm he wanders, and ’tis said
That he is changed and bears a brighter form,
And goodly sons again about him swarm;
And peace, ’tis but a hollow truce I know,
Now reigns between him and his ancient foe.
He hates me still, and fain would do me harm,
But neither man nor demon dares offend,
Who hath the cruel Thunder-Bird for friend.