Indian Woman’s Death-Song

“Let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of a woman.”“The Prairie.”

Down a broad river of the western wilds,Piercing thick forest-glooms, a light canoeSwept with the current: fearful was the speedOf the frail bark, as by a tempest’s wingBorne leaf-like on to where the mist of sprayRose with the cataract’s thunder. Yet within,Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone,Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast,A woman stood! Upon her Indian browSat a strange gladness, and her dark hair wavedAs if triumphantly. She press’d her child,In its bright slumber, to her beating heart,And lifted her sweet voice, that rose awhileAbove the sound of waters, high and clear,Wafting a wild proud strain--a song of death.

“Roll swiftly to the spirits’ land, thou mighty stream and free!Father of ancient waters, roll! and bear our lives with thee!The weary bird that storms have toss’d would seek the sunshine’scalm,And the deer that hath the arrow’s hurt flies to the woods of balm.

“Roll on!--my warrior’s eye hath look’d upon another’s face,And mine hath faded from his soul, as fades a moonbeam’s trace:My shadow comes not o’er his path, my whisper to his dream--He flings away the broken reed. Roll swifter yet, thou stream!

“The voice that spoke of other days is hush’d within his breast,But mine its lonely music haunts, and will not let me rest;It sings a low and mournful song of gladness that is gone--I cannot live without that light. Father of waves! roll on!

“Will he not miss the bounding step that met him from the chase?The heart of love that made his home an ever-sunny place?The hand that spread the hunter’s board, and deck’d his couch ofyore?--He will not! Roll, dark foaming stream, on to the better shore!

“Some blessed fount amidst the woods of that bright land must flow,Whose waters from my soul may lave the memory of this woe;Some gentle wind must whisper there, whose breath may waft awayThe burden of the heavy night, the sadness of the day.

“And thou, my babe! though born, like me, for woman’s weary lot,Smile!--to that wasting of the heart, my own! I leave thee not;Too bright a thing art thou to pine in aching love away--Thy mother bears thee far, young fawn! from sorrow and decay.

“She bears thee to the glorious bowers where none are heard to weep,And where th’ unkind one hath no power again to trouble sleep;And where the soul shall find its youth, as wakening from a dream:One moment, and that realm is ours. On, on, dark-rolling stream!”

“Father of waters,” the Indian name for the Mississippi.