The spirits the words of the brave fulfill--
Wakawa sleeps on the sacred hill,
And Wakinyan Tanka, his son, is chief.
Ah soon shall the lips of men forget
Wakawa's name, and the mound of stone
Will speak of the dead to the winds alone,
And the winds will whistle their mock regret.
The speckled cones of the scarlet berries[58]
Lie red and ripe in the prairie grass.
The _Si-yo_[59] clucks on the emerald prairies
To her infant brood. From the wild morass,
On the sapphire lakelet set within it,
_Maga_ sails forth with her wee ones daily.
They ride on the dimpling waters gaily,
Like a fleet of yachts and a man-of-war.
The piping plover, the light-winged linnet,
And the swallow sail in the sunset skies.
The whippowil from her cover hies,
And trills her song on the amber air.
Anon to her loitering mate she cries:
"Flip, O Will!--trip, O Will!--skip, O Will!"
And her merry mate from afar replies:
"Flip I will--skip I will--trip I will;"
And away on the wings of the wind he flies.
And bright from her lodge in the skies afar
Peeps the glowing face of the Virgin Star.
The fox-pups[60] creep from their mother's lair,
And leap in the light of the rising moon;
And loud on the luminous, moonlit lake
Shrill the bugle-notes of the lover loon;
And woods and waters and welkin break
Into jubilant song--it is joyful June.
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