Little Moccasins

Come out, O Little Moccasins, and frolic on the snow!         Come out, O tiny beaded feet, and twinkle in the light!         I'll play the old Red River reel, you used to love it so:         Awake, O Little Moccasins, and dance for me to-night!         Your hair was all a gleamy gold, your eyes a corn-flower blue;         Your cheeks were pink as tinted shells, you stepped light as a fawn;         Your mouth was like a coral bud, with seed pearls peeping through;         As gladdening as Spring you were, as radiant as dawn.         Come out, O Little Moccasins! I'll play so soft and low,         The songs you loved, the old heart-songs that in my mem'ry ring;         O child, I want to hear you now beside the campfire glow!         With all your heart a-throbbing in the simple words you sing.         For there was only you and I, and you were all to me;         And round us were the barren lands, but little did we fear;         Of all God's happy, happy folks the happiest were we. . . .         (Oh, call her, poor old fiddle mine, and maybe she will hear!)         Your mother was a half-breed Cree, but you were white all through;         And I, your father was - but well, that's neither here nor there;         I only know, my little Queen, that all my world was you,         And now that world can end to-night, and I will never care.         For there's a tiny wooden cross that pricks up through the snow:         (Poor Little Moccasins! you're tired, and so you lie at rest.)         And there's a grey-haired, weary man beside the campfire glow:         (O fiddle mine! the tears to-night are drumming on your breast.)