The candle in the cabin :: :: University of Virginia Library

I have used “The Mohawk” in many previous poems, in other books as a total symbol of all the Red Indian Tribes and all the Red Indian Gods from the beginning to the end of time.

BY THE MOHAWK'S BUCKSKIN DOOR

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

Do we return to the Rockies?
Surely we camp once more
There on the peaks of to-morrow
By the Mohawk's buckskin door.
The old Gods and the new Gods
Must fight in student hearts.
When the new tribes seem most sleepy
Another war-whoop starts.
When the old Gods seem but basalt,
We hear a sistrum ring.
In the end of the years
Will Thoth, the scribe,
Or the Mohawk be our king?

THE MOHAWK COMES

Bring my green-gold weeds and trees
To speak of his approach,
The Mohawk.
Bring my roaring waterfalls
To speak of his approach,
The Mohawk.
Bring the fearful glaciers
To speak of his approach,
The Mohawk.
Bring the terrible mountain forms
To speak of his approach,
The Mohawk.

For when weeds and trees are visions blazing through the midnight black,
When waterfalls are like great ghosts that walk across the storm and wrack,
When visions of vast glaciers bring the ghosts of rocks of old,
And the mountains seem to march and earthquakes with new clouds enfold,
Then the Mohawk brings the ages, brings the Indian ages back!

CONCERNING THE MOUNTAIN IN GLACIER PARK CALLED “ALMOST A DOG”

Almost a dog
But really a prologue,
To a wind song whose rhythms make ripples in creeks.
Almost a dog
But really a dialogue
Between my sick soul and the guardian it seeks.
Almost a dog
But really an epilogue
To an epic of hiding and seeking for weeks.
Almost a barking dog
Really a monologue,
A mountain that barks of itself at the sky,
And all the invisible things that go by.

Almost a dog
But really a thunder cloud,
Changing again to a mystery and mist.
Almost a dog
But really a fire-log,
Really a sunset where rose clouds are kissed
By storms that keep troth and keep tryst.

Almost a dog
But really a Mohawk's arm,

A tomahawk held in a warrior's fist.
Almost a dog
But really a jewel,
A vast and incredibly deep amethyst.
Almost a barking dog
Really a monologue,
A mountain that barks of itself at the moon,
Yet a sod so friendly, so shaggy, so wagging,
When one lays a tired hand in the deep bear grass;
The mountainside turns like a friend to you soon
To guard you and guide you home under the moon,
A dog like a friendly bear under the moon.

Almost a dog
Yet really a monologue,
Of the heart-roaring Mohawk singing in wonder
How mystery hangs like tree-moss from the heavens.
Almost a dog
But really the thunder—
The Red Indian Thunder, the Thunder, the Thunder!

THE RED INDIAN BRIDE

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

There is a bridal hour
In my ancestral story
That comes each year with overwhelming power.
I remember the wild pioneer
The younger son from England and from Spain,
Who took the Red Indian bride
On the mossy rock in the rain,
Somewhere in Virginia,
Or somewhere in Tennessee,
And set the Picts and Scots forever free,
And turned loose on America
The Saxons and the Angles,
Wearing Odin's raven wings
And Thor's war-bangles;
Wearing the sort of feathers
Fit for man—
The feathers of Black Hawk and Powhatan,
And made me an Indian chief.
Though I am worlds away
(There are mountain ranges between us)
Yet that deep-wood yesterday
Is nearer to my bridegroom blood
Than all other natural things.
If I have sons, let them be red,
Painted Red Indian kings.

THE FLYING PAPOOSES

We have seen the Flying Papooses
Climbing Hawaii's crown;
We have seen them in visions in Mesa Verde,
In Yosemite's out-door town
Of towers that never will tumble down.

We have seen the Flying Papooses
In dreams, in the great redwood trees,
Flying and dancing in air,
Above the sequoia's knees,
We have seen the Flying Papooses
In the Yellowstone Park in our dream.
They jump into boiling waters,
They sing in the geyser steam.
We have seen the Flying Papooses
Diving in Crater Lake,
And marvelous medicine make,
There with the birds and the wildflowers
On the steep bank of Crater Lake.

We have dreamed of the Flying Papooses
Using snowshoes on Mount Rainier;
And climbing to dawn stars in snowshoes,
And riding the skies on moose-backs and deer.
We have dreamed of the Flying Papooses
How they captured Glacier Park,

Changing for an hour
From Flying Papooses
To young wolves that race and bark.

We have seen them fly up Mount McKinley
From the deep of the valley to where
The peak lifts tremendous snowstorms,
And throws them like flowers through the air.

In all of the Parks of the nation,
By these wings is your spirit set free,
The wings of the Flying Papooses,
In the mountains like primitive temples,
The forests and cliffs like the sea.
By the wings and the cries of the Flying Papooses
Is your soul long in prison,
Given its pride,
And its sails,
And set free.

THE FOURTH RETURN TO SUN-MOUNTAIN

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

From clear St. Marys Lake to the high blue
We saw the angels climb in sunset light, their wings all new.
And so in rain and storm and rainbows
We swore to climb, too,
To climb those celestial ladders every one,
Past the mountain peak called Going-to-the-Sun.

A double mind was ours.
We saw those angels as we see the flowers,
And yet we felt ourselves as Indians
Without aureoles
Serving Red Gods whose names were never written
On old scrolls;
Serving storms and stars
Alien to that angel band.
So while the angels filled the sky
The Indian storm Gods danced upon the mountain peaks,
The glaciers, the forests, the water and the land.
And yet with Indians and angels we were one,
All going, going, going,
To the Sun, the Sun, the Sun!

IDOL OF THE DEER

Behold:—
The steps to the
Idol of the deer,
The idol was a
Cloud in the highest sky,
The steps were clouds
Above Sun-Mountain.

THE GOLDEN ORCHIDS

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

In the snow-born waterfalls, we found the golden orchids,
Nodding in the moss beneath the thunder.
Though many a snowstorm, there, had come and gone,
Though many a wind had deeply snowed them under,
They nodded there, and slept in spite of thunder,
In delicate, serene, and golden wonder.

TO THE TALLEST ASPEN OF GLACIER PARK

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

You are marvelous in your power to soar.
Too white to be a tree,
Too slim to be a tree,
And yet so strong, outshining all
The bright-boughed pines around;
Making the stream about your feet
Sing with a holy sound
From the consecrated ground.
You are a gate of Paradise,
The only one to-day that we have found.

THE OLD MAIL COACH TO BELTON

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

The old mail coach to Belton
Seemed to sweep the purple seas:
The old mail coach to Belton,
In the drizzle and the fog.
The old mail coach to Belton
Went through an old burnt forest,
Past blackened mast and log;
But our hearts were gay with the conquest
Of the world and all the seas.
Our hobnailed shoes were water-soaked,
We were mud up to the knees;
But with the ancient silken sails,
We swept purple seas,
For our hearts were tides within us,
Greater than all the seas.

THE FAWNS AND THE STRANGER

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

The fawns across the farmyard in the rain
Leap with a grace astonishing the eye.
They know the farmer, and they trust the farmer,
But watch the stranger with a weather eye;
And if the stranger quivers but a feather,
The fawns leap over the fence and say “good-by.”

THE DEER OF QUARTZ RIDGE

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

The deer of Quartz Lake, Quartz Creek, and Quartz Ridge,
Leap to a rhythm that sets me afire.
They jump the rail fences, jump the barb wire.
They live in their leaping, they hold their heads high,
These quivering, shivering, delicate wonders,
The deer of Quartz Lake, that rush by.

THE WRITHING, IMPERFECT EARTH

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

Dear love, if you and I had perfect love,
No doubt we could not face the imperfect earth.
We have a little, struggling, deathless love,
Struggling up through the writhing, imperfect earth.

We who would make of every breath a song,
We who would make of every vista, peace,
Struggle up like rooted growing things,
Like pines at the mountain top in stony earth,
Struggling up through the writhing, imperfect earth.

Yet now, dear love, we proudly remake our vows,
Standing like gods beneath the noon or the moon.
Yet we bend with love flowers on our brows,
Renew them soon if they wither soon.

Yet, my darling, darling, though we wound,
Misunderstand, and struggle for our peace,
Still kisses, dearest kisses, give release;
And the sod blooms with a flower of deathless worth,
And secret heavenly mirth,
The flower of faith.

The angel flower of faith,
That strange scrap of snow,
That magical sweet wraith,
Struggling up through the writhing, imperfect earth.

BEGGING PARDON

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

There is only one way to forgive,
With a whole heart.
There is only one way to forgive,
Take a new start.
There is only one way to beg pardon,
And that is abjectly, completely.
And so I beg pardon,
And will you forgive me
Sweetly?

I SAW A ROSE IN EGYPT

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

I saw a rose in Egypt
Where many a lotus blooms.
In Egypt, in my dream,
I saw a rose.
Alone there in the sand,
The glory of the world,
In Egypt, by the stream,
I saw a rose.

WHEN YOU AND I WERE SINGERS IN THE MOUNTAINS

The Forest-Ranger's Courtship

When you and I were singers, were singers in these mountains,
A million and a million years ago,
We built a nest of silk
From the fireweed of these mountains,
And sang and sang, and saw the summers go.

When you and I were singers, were singers in these mountains,
We built our nest in echoing Indian Pass,
But we called it in bird-language:—
“The place of echoing grass.”

The longest sweetest echo the world of birds may know,
We heard there, we heard there long ago.
We could sing long sweet sentences
And hear the whole come back—
A whispering of trembling lovers' words,
A whispering of ardent little birds.

When you and I were singers, were singers in these mountains,

We were just such mountain larks as sing at dawn,
Now making great cantatas with a chorus of dim echoes,
Calling sweet lovers to this sacred lawn,
Saying: “Set free your hearts and sing to the dawn!”