Speechless, motionless, unconscious
Of the daylight or the darkness.
Then they buried Minnehaha ;
In the snow a grave they made her,
In the forest deep and darksome,
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
Clothed her in her richest garments,
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
Thus they buried Minnehaha.

And at night a fire was lighted,
On her grave four times was kindled,
For her soul upon its journey
To the Islands of the Blessed.
From his doorway Hiawatha
Saw it burning in the forest,
Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks;
From his sleepless bed uprising,
From the bed of Minnehaha,
Stood and watched it at the doorway,
That it might not be extinguished,
Might not leave her in the darkness.
"Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha!

Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!

Come not back again to labor,
Come not back again to suffer,

Where the Famine and the Fever
Wear the heart and waste the body.
Soon my task will be completed,
Soon your footsteps I shall follow
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!"

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

[Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807; died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 7, 1892]

PROEM

WRITTEN TO INTRODUCE THE FIRST GENERAL COLLECTION OF HIS POEMS

I love the old melodious lays

Which softly melt the ages through,

The songs of Spenser's golden days,

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase,

Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours

To breathe their marvelous notes I try;

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers

In silence feel the dewy showers,

And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,

The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme

Beat often Labor's hurried time,

Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies ;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,

Or softer shades of Nature's face,

I view her common forms with unanointed eyes.

Nor mine the seerlike power to show

The secrets of the heart and mind;

To drop the plummet line below

Our common world of joy and woe,

A more intense despair or brighter hope to find.

Yet here at least an earnest sense

Of human right and weal is shown;

A hate of tyranny intense,

And hearty in its vehemence,

As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own.

O Freedom! if to me belong

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,

Still with a love as deep and strong

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine!

THE FAREWELL

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN BONDAGE

Gone, gone, sold and gone,

To the rice swamp dank and lone.

O, when weary, sad, and slow,

From the fields at night they go,

Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,

There no brother's voice shall greet them;
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Where the tyrant's power is o'er,
And the fetter galls no more!

Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

Gone, gone, sold and gone,

To the rice swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth;
By the bruised reed He spareth;
Oh, may He, to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known,
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love.
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters;
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

ICHABOD

WRITTEN UPON HEARING THAT DANIEL WEBSTER HAD MADE A SPEECH IN FAVOR OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn.

Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath

A snare for all;

And pitying eyes, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

Oh! dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age,

Falls back in night.