Until her husband and her foe
Have left the lodge and gone from sight.
Then with a tearless eye and bright,
She gazes madly round the place
Where every comfort bears the trace
Of wifely labor wrought with pain,
Of woman's love that lives in vain.
Here moccasins lie with bead-work gay;
Here on the wall the breezes sway
The music-breathing flute,
Whose lips are dry and mute,
While she who once inspired its tone
Now sits despairing and alone.
The very curls of smoke that rise
And mingle with the morning skies,
Are tokens of the duties done
Beneath the red eye of the rising sun.
Awhile she sits in cruel thought,
Till, with her anguish overwrought,
She flies to him who sweetly bears
The image of her faithless god,
And on each infant feature wears
The smiling hopes on which he trod.
Convulsively she clasps her child,
Whose love, alone left undefiled,
Is not enough to nerve her soul
Beneath its crushing weight of dole.

She listens to the roaring water,
Whose voice she heard in music grand
When she was but the old chief's daughter,
When love such wondrous fortunes planned;
And ruthless phantoms of the past
Across her mind are flitting fast,
Each with a keen, envenomed dart
That poisons brain and tortures heart.
With breath too quick to lift a sigh,
With marble firmness on her brow,
With glassy wildness in her eye,
She seeks the river's margin now.
She springs into a birch canoe,
All beaded with the morning dew,
And clasping close her mother's pride,
Soon gains the middle of the tide.

O hark! thou selfish one who gave
Embrace more treacherous than the wave:
Does not her song which mounts the air
Reproach thee with its grand despair?
Why dost thou hurry to the river?
Why dost thou call, why dost thou shiver,
While she whom thou hast driven away
Is bold amidst the chilly spray?
What good is all thy vain remorse?
Thinkst thou from jaws of death to force
A sacrifice so lightly thrust
Upon the altar of thy lust?
A host like thee could nothing urge
To meet one tone of her sad dirge:

_My heart cannot live without loving;
My heart cannot give up its own;
No more will I linger with sorrow,
But follow the joys that have flown;
With Death I will rest me to-morrow
On a kind, dreamless bed of stone.

I fear not the rush of the water,
For me all its terrors are vain;
It cannot bring less than gladness,
For it banishes all my pain;
I will sink with my burden of sadness
And mix with the earth