Ugonde's Tale.

For a while the salt brine leaves me     O'er my terraced rocks to fall,     And my broad swift-gliding waters     Olden memories recall.     Ere the tallest pines were seedlings     With my life-stream these were blent;     As a father's words, like arrows     Straight to children's hearts are sent,     So my currents speeding downwards,     Ever passing, sing the same     Story of the days remembered,     When the stranger people came.     Men of mighty limbs and voices,     Bearing shining shields and knives,     Painted gleamed their hair like evening,     When the sun in ocean dives.     Blue their eyes and tall their stature,     Huge as Indian shadows seen     When the sun through mists of morning     Casts them o'er a clear lake's sheen.     From before the great Pale-faces     Fled the tribes to woods and caves,     Watching thence their fearful councils,     Where they talked beside the waves.     For they loved the shores, and fashioned     Houses from its stones, and there     Fished and rested, danced at night-time     By their fire and torches' glare.     Sang loud songs before the pine-logs     As they crackled in the flame,     Raised and drank from bone-cups, shouting     Fiercely some strange spirit's name.     Turning to the morning's pathway,     Cried they thus to gods, and none     Dared to fight the bearded giants,     Children of the fire and sun.     From their bodies fell our flint-darts,     Yet their arrows flew, like rays     Flashing from the rocks where polished     By the ice in winter days.     Then the Indians prayed the spirits     Haunting river, bank, and hill,     To let hatred, like marsh vapour,     Rise among their foes and kill.     And they seemed to heed, for anger     Often maddened all the band,     Fighting for some stones that glittered     Yellow on Ugond's sand.     Seeing axe and spear-head crimson,     Hope illumined doubt and dread,     And our land's despairing children     Called upon the mighty dead.     All the Northern night-air shaking,     Rose the ancients' bright array,     Burning lines of battle breaking     Darkness into lurid day.     But the stranger hearts were hardened,     Fearless slept they; then at last     Our Great Spirit heard, and answered     From his home in heaven vast.     For his waving locks were tempests,     And the thunder-cloud his frown;     Where he trod the earthquake followed,     And the forests bowed them down.     As his whirlwind struck the mountains,     Rent and lifted, swayed the ground;     Winged knives of crooked lightning     Gleamed from skies and gulfs profound.     Floods, from wonted channels driven,     Roared at falling hillside's shock;     What was land became the torrent,     What was lake became the rock.     Now the river and the ocean,     Whispering, say: "Our floods alone     See white skeletons slow-moving     Near the olden walls of stone."     Moving slow in stream and sea-tide,     There the stranger warriors sleep,     And their shades still cry in anguish     Where the foaming waters leap.