Lying still in every valley. Homeward now went Hiawatha ; Pleasant was the landscape round him, Pleasant was the air above him, For the bitterness of anger Had departed wholly from him, From his brain the thought of vengeance, From his heart the burning fever. Only once his pace he slackened, Only once he paused or halted, In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, There the ancient Arrow-maker Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Wayward as the Minnehaha, With her moods of shade and sunshine, Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate, Feet as rapid as the river, Tresses flowing like the water. And he named her from the river, Was it then for heads of arrows, In the land of the Dacotahs ? Was it not to see the maiden, Gleaming, glancing through the branches, Who shall say what thoughts and visions Fill the fiery brains of young men ? Filled the heart of Hiawatha? All he told to old Nokomis, When he reached the lodge at sunset, Not a word he said of arrows, Not a word of Laughing Water! V. Hiawatha's Fasting. You shall hear how Hiawatha But for profit of the people, First he built a lodge for fasting, Built a wigwam in the forest, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, In the blithe and pleasant Spring-time, Saw the deer start from the thicket, Saw the rabbit in his burrow, Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, On the next day of his fasting By the river's brink he wandered, Through the Muskoday, the meadow, Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, And the strawberry, Odahmin, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the third day of his fasting |