The Indian boy is fast asleep,
And dew on his wolf-skin gray,
Hath cried him weary long ago;
His little grey dog is moaning low,
And the big owl screams for day.
Poor lonely sleeping Indian boy,—
How wild are his fitful dreams?
—In mirth she comes; and sinking now
To the water-moon she seems.
A wolf is trotting in the brake,
All under the panthers’ limb;
But they have licked a fawn’s sweet blood,
And careless are grown of him.
Then darker grew the shadowy woods,
And bent with a crackling sound;
Shines through the dark the flashing foam
On the pebbled beach around.
Too late the warning loon has yell’d
To the shallow-wading crane;
For now the thunder blast is up,
And whirls the driving rain.
O, red girl of the sky-blue lake,
Look well to thy dancing bark;
The wind is loud, the wave is white,
And the breaking morn is dark;
_The wind is loud, the wave is white,_
_Look well to thy slender oar:_
_The loon hath need of its wing of jet_
_To battle the might of the waves, that fret_
_Along to the foamy shore._
Alone, upon the frothy beach,
In the still and pleasant morn,
The Ottawa child is waiting yet,
But frightened and forlorn.
His eyes are red, his hair is wild;
He hath donned his wolf-skin gray;
His shivering dog is moaning low;
The child hath turned him round to go,—
He can no longer stay.
Yet once, with aching heart, he looks
To the isle of flowers again;
It seems a sleeping bank of green
Upon a silvery plain.
Within its shade, the voiceless swans
Are sailing two by two;
But never his eye can catch a glimpse
Of the maiden’s birch canoe;—
The bow-neck’d swans are all that move
Upon the silvery blue.
Turn home, heart-broken child! turn home;
That bark is in the deep;
And she has gone with the tinted shells
To their own green caves to sleep.
Her spirit owns a brighter isle
Than floats the moon below;
_Where never the thunder-blast is heard,_
_She lists to the song of the scarlet bird,_
_And plays with the beautiful doe._
There! for this letter you owe me an oyster supper,—but if you will give
me that beautiful engraving from Claude, hanging in your study, I will
call the matter settled.