 | The hill of stones and other poems |  |
80
FRAGMENT OF A CHIPPEWA LEGEND.
Despairing and sunburnt and thirsty,The forest-trees bend o'er the lake-brink,
Where, mocking them, chatter the squirrels
At play on the mouldering mosses;
While over them, blue and relentless,
Rise, cloudless and sultry, the heavens.
And where, cried the pine-tree in anger,
Ah, where is my warrior North Wind?
Asleep, quoth the gossiping chipmunk,
On white-bosomed snows of the Northland.
And where, moaned the glossy-limbed beeches,
Where hide our sweet chiefs of the summer,
The rose-breathing South and the West Wind?
Shrilled sharply the loon, from the water,
In gardens of jasmine they wander,
81
Spake sadly the tamarack stately:
O'er forest and mountain top vainly
A-weary I watch for the East Wind,—
My wild warring rover, the East Wind,
Who smites the dark sea in his fury,
And comes to me eager and angry.
Forgotten, forgotten, forgotten,
The nightingale sings from the elders.
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