And a low, sad voice on the hill I heard,
Like the mournful wail of a widowed bird."
Then lo, as he looked from his lodge afar,
He saw the glow of the Evening-star;
"And yonder," he said, "is Wiwaste's face;
She looks from her lodge on our fading race,
Devoured by famine, and fraud, and war,
And chased and hounded by fate and woe,
As the white wolves follow the buffalo;"
And he named the planet the _Virgin Star_.[54]
"Wakawa," he muttered, "the guilt is thine!
She was pure--she was pure as the fawn unborn.
O why did I hark to the cry of scorn,
Or the words of the lying libertine?
Wakawa, Wakawa, the guilt is thine!
The springs will return with the voice of birds,
But the voice of my daughter will come no more.
She wakened the woods with her musical words,
And the sky-lark, ashamed of his voice, forbore.
She called back the years that had passed, and long
I heard their voice in her happy song.
O why did the chief of the tall _Hohe_
His feet from _Kapoza_[6] so long delay?
For his father sat at my father's feast,
And he at Wakawa's--an honored guest.
He is dead!--he is slain on the Bloody Plain,
By the hand of the treacherous Chippeway;
And the face shall I never behold again
Of my brave young brother--the chief Chaske.
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