ep, unhealing wound--the rent of red
Made by the weapon of the Iroquois.

Closed in the village with its palisade,
Guarded by many a mighty Huron brave,
The women and the little children stayed,
Lest forest fire or sweeping midnight raid
Make all their hunting ground a common grave.

It was at daybreak that they heard the cry:
"The Iroquois!--The Iroquois! They come!
Fly to the hidden forest places! Fly!--
To linger in the village is to die--
Steal through the river grasses--and be dumb!"

Swiftly the women and the children fled,
But with the braves de Breboeuf stayed behind.
"Go!" cried the chief, "good father--we be dead!"
Yet soft he answered as he shook his head:
"I stay with thee--and with thy old and blind."

When the red sun came creeping up the sky
Grey death had reaped the harvest hate had sown;
The Jesuit heard no longer curse or sigh--
His prayers were said for those about to die--
He faced the living Iroquois alone.

They bound him fast beneath the forest green,
And when was come the shadowy edge of night--
Nay--ask not what the horned owl hath seen,
Nor what the moon doth know--white and serene
The soul of Jean de Breboeuf took its flight.

IN EGYPT

It was the Angel Azrael the Lord God sent below
At midnight, into every house in Egypt, long ago--
0 long, and long ago.

All day the wife of Pharaoh had paced the palace hall
Or the long white pillared court that was open to the sky;
A passion of wild restlessness ensnared her in its thrall
While she fought a fear within her--a thing that would not die.

She had sent away her maidens--their weeping vexed her ears--
Their pallid faces filled her with impatient pitying scorn;--
But she kept one time-worn woman, who long had outgrown fears,
The old brown nurse who held her son the day that he was born.

The mighty gods had failed her--the river-gods and the sun,
And the little gods of brass and stone--who stared but made no sign,
So she pled with them no longer, her prayers were said and done,
And now she neither bowed her head, or knelt at any shrine.

Her hair was blown upon the wind like wreathes of golden flame,
And the sea-blue of her eyes cast blue shadows on her face,
For she was not of Egypt--but unto the king she came
A captive--yet a princess--from a northern sea-bound place.

She watched the fiery wheel roll down behind the level land,
One small hand curled above her eyes,