Two hundred white Winters and more have fled from the face of the Summer Since here by the cataract's roar, in the moon of the red-blooming lilies,
In the tee of Ta-té-psin was born Winona — wild-rose of the prairies. Like the summer sun peeping, at morn, o'er the hills was the face of Winona.
And here she grew up like a queen — a romping and lily-lipped laughter, And danced on the undulant green, and played in the frolicsome waters,
Where the foaming tide tumbles and whirls o'er the murmuring rocks in the rapids; And whiter than foam were the pearls that gleamed in the midst of her laughter.
Long and dark was her flowing hair flung like the robe of the night to the breezes; And gay as the robin she sung, or the gold-breasted lark of the meadows.
Like the wings of the wind were her feet, and as sure as the feet of Ta-tó-ka And oft like an antelope fleet o'er the hills and the prairies she bounded,
Lightly laughing in sport as she ran, and looking back over her shoulder At the fleet-footed maiden or man that vainly her flying feet followed.
The belle of the village was she, and the pride of the aged Ta-té-psin, Like a sunbeam she lighted his tee, and gladdened the heart of her father.
Father René Menard — it was he, long lost to his Jesuit brothers, Sent forth by an holy decree to carry the Cross to the heathen.
In his old age abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest;
For angels she sent him as men — in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert,
Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling “Te Deum laudamus.”
“Unktómee— Ho!” muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome caves, and walks on the marshes at midnight,
With a flickering torch in his hand, to decoy to his den the unwary. His tongue could they not understand, but his torn hands all shriveled with famine
He stretched to the hunters and said: “He feedeth his chosen with manna; And ye are the angels of God sent to save me from death in the desert.”
His famished and woe-begone face, and his tones touched the hearts of the hunters; They fed the poor father apace, and they led him away to Ka-thá-ga.
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