ne, looks laughing down on lake and lea;
Weird o'er the waters shrills the loon; the high stars twinkle in the sea.
From bank and hill the whippowil sends piping forth his flute-like notes,
And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats.
The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores;
The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,--
These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair;
Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff like wine the balmy air.
'Tis well. Of yore from isle and shore
the smoke of Indian _teepees_[CB] rose;
The hunter plied the silent oar; the forest lay in still repose.
The moon-faced maid, in leafy glade, her warrior waited from the chase;
The nut-brown, naked children played, and chased the gopher on the grass.
The dappled fawn on wooded lawn, peeped out upon the birch canoe,
Swift-gliding in the gray of dawn along the silent waters blue.
In yonder tree the great Wanm-dee[CC] securely built her spacious nest;
The blast that swept the landlocked sea[CD]
but rocked her clamorous babes to rest.
By grassy mere the elk and deer gazed on the hunter as he came;
Nor fled with fear from bow or spear;--
"so wild were they that they were tame."
Ah, birch canoe, and hunter, too, have long forsaken lake and shore;
He bade his fathers' bones adieu and turned away forevermore.
But still, methinks, on dusky brinks the spirit of the warrior moves;
At crystal springs the hunter drinks, and nightly haunts the spot he loves.
For oft at night I see the light of lodge-fires on the shadowy shores,
And hear the wail some maiden's sprite above her slaughtered warrior pours.
I hear the sob, on Spirit Knob,[BZ] of Indian mother o'er her child;
And on the midnight waters throb her low _yun-he-he's_[CE] weird and wild:
And sometimes, too, the light canoe glides like a shadow o'er the deep
At midnight when the moon is low, and all the shores are hushed in sleep.
Alas,--Alas!--for all things pass; and we shall vanish too, as they;
We build our monuments of brass, and granite, but they waste away.

[BZ] Spirit-Knob was a small hill upon a point in the lake in full view
from Wayzata. It is now washed away by the waves. The spirit of a Dakota
mother, whose only child was drowned in the lake during a storm many
years ago, often wailed at midnight (so the Dakotas said), on this hill.
So they called it _Wa-