and her senses reeled;
Better for her a thousand times the grave
Than life in Gray Cloud's tent, but what could she
Against the stern, implacable decree
Of one whose will was never known to yield?

Winona fled, scarce knowing where or how;
Fled like a phantom through the moonlight cool,
Until she stood upon the rocky brow
That overlooked a deep sequestered pool,
Where slumbering in a grove-encircled bay
Lake Minnetonka's purest waters lay.
Unto the brink she rushed, but faltered there--
Life to the young is sweet; in vain her eye
Swept for a moment grove and wave and sky
With mute appeal. But see, two white swans fair
Gleamed from the shadows that o'erhung the shore,
Like moons emerging from a sable screen;
Swimming abreast, what haughty king and queen,
With arching necks their regal course they bore.
Winona marveled at the unwonted sight
Of white swans swimming there at dead of night,
Her frenzy half beguiling with the scene.
Unearthly heralds sure, for in their wake
What ruddy furrows seamed the placid lake.
Almost beneath her feet they came, so near
She might have tossed a pebble on their backs,
When lo, their long necks pierced the waters clear,
As down they dove, two shafts of purest light,
And chasing fast on their descending tracks,
A swarm of spirals luminous and white,
Swirled to the gloom of nether depths from sight.

Then all was still for some few moments' space,
So smooth the pool, so vanished every trace,
It seemed that surely the fantastic pair
Had been but snowy phantoms passing there.
Winona hardly hoped to see them rise,
But while she gazed with half-expectant eyes,
The waters strangely quivered in a place
About the bigness of a tipi's space,
Where weirdly lighting up the hollow wave
Beat a deep-glowing heart, whose pulsing ray
Now faded to a rosy flush away,
Now filled with fiery glare the farthest cave.
A shapeless bulk arose, then, taking form,
Bloomed forth upon the bosom of the lake
A crystal rose, or hillock mammiform,
And round its base the curling foam did break
As round a sunny islet in a storm;
And on it poised a swiftly changing form,
With filmy mantle falling musical,
And colors of the floating bubble's ball,
Fair and elusive as the sprites that play,
Bright children of the sun-illumined spray,
'Mid rainbows of a mountain waterfall.
Then mingling with the falling waters came
In whispers sibilant Winona's name;
So indistinct and low that voice intense,
That she, half f