d the Chippeways hand to hand;
And foe with foe, in the deadly strife,
Lay clutching the scalp of his foe and dead,
With a tomahawk sunk in his ghastly head,
Or his still heart sheathing a bloody blade.
Like a bear in the battle Wakawa raves,
And cheers the hearts of his falling braves.
But a panther crouches along his track--
He springs with a yell on Wakawa's back!
The tall chief, stabbed to the heart, lies low;
But his left hand clutches his deadly foe,
And his red right clinches the bloody hilt
Of his knife in the heart of the slayer dyed.
And thus was the life of Wakawa spilt,
And slain and slayer lay side by side.
The unscalped corpse of their honored chief
His warriors snatched from the yelling pack,
And homeward fled on their forest track
With their bloody burden and load of grief.

The spirits the words of the brave fulfill--
Wakawa sleeps on the sacred hill,
And Wakinyan Tanka, his son, is chief.
Ah soon shall the lips of men forget
Wakawa's name, and the mound of stone
Will speak of the dead to the winds alone,
And the winds will whistle their mock regret.

The speckled cones of the scarlet berries[58]
Lie red and ripe in the prairie grass.
The _Si-yo_[59] clucks on the emerald prairies
To her infant brood. From the wild morass,
On the sapphire lakelet set within it,
_Maga_ sails forth with her wee ones daily.
They ride on the dimpling waters gaily,
Like a fleet of yachts and a man-of-war.
The piping plover, the light-winged linnet,
And the swallow sail in the sunset skies.
The whippowil from her cover hies,
And trills her song on the amber air.
Anon to her loitering mate she cries:
"Flip, O Will!--trip, O Will!--skip, O Will!"
And her merry mate from afar replies:
"Flip I will--skip I will--trip I will;"
And away on the wings of the wind he flies.
And bright from her lodge in the skies afar
Peeps the glowing face of the Virgin Star.
The fox-pups[60] creep from their mother's lair,
And leap in the light of the rising moon;
And loud on the luminous, moonlit lake
Shrill the bugle-notes of the lover loon;
And woods and waters and welkin break
Into jubilant song--it is joyful June.

But where is Wiwaste? O where is she--
The virgin avenged--the queenly queen--
The womanly woman--the heroine?
Has she gone to the spirits? and can it be
That her beautiful face is the Virgin Star
Peeping out from the door of her lodge afar,
Or upward sailing the silver sea,
Star-beaconed and lit like an avenue