Shown beyond the soft smooth water,

Soon, as smoke, to vanish, molten
In the misty, fleecy mere-marge,
In the sweltering, steaming margin,
In the drowsy, swoony margin
Now dwarf rock or giant foreland,
Lowly isle and lofty light-house,

Doubled in the hazy distance,
Doubled in the simmering vapour

Where grey sky and mere-marge mingled,

Doubled now, and now inverted.

Strange and wild the forms that issued

From the steams of Light's weird cauldron,

As at hest of dread magician.

Where at peace lay isle and headland,
Swart snakes twain, with crested foreheads,
Rear'd their huge coils from the smooth lake,
With their long-aisled jaws struck terror,

Threaten'd death with many a grim fang
Ranged in dark close-serried war-ranks,-
Hurrying each to rend the other

In fierce fratricidal conflict.b

b

Composed, from memory and by aid of sketches, in August, 1859. It would have been mentioned by Livy as a portent of the war now raging between the two great sections of the (dis-) United States of North America (cf. Virgil. G. i. 474, 489-502; Ovid. M. xv. 782; Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, ii. 2).

XI.

The Faithless Squaw

and

The Stately Crane,

OR

THE ORIGIN OF THE

WHITEFISH" AND OF THE TOTEM OF THE CRANES",

The fairest of things in Red Man's sea,—

The daintiest fish

That e'er lay on platter?

'Tis good as a boil,

"Tis good as a broil;

'Tis milk, honey, oil;

None sweeter, none fatter:

A right royal dish

Is the dainty whitefish.77

This nice little creature,

The pride of the mere,

Bonne bouche of good cheer,

Red Man calls water-deer.
The word 's ahdik-kummig: a
"Tis rather a 'rum,' big,
Crack-jaw title; nor clear

Is its ring, but full queer

To Yaganash bear.

=

reindeer, and kummig is

=

waters (see a. n. 33), K. (p. 326)

a Ahdik is: g being the plural suffix (Sch. H. L. p. 265). writes the word atikameg, and Sch. (ib.), inconsistently addikkum-maig. L. writes ahdeek.

b 'Yaganash' (= English) is, thinks K. (p. 371), an Ojibwa corruption of the French Anglais. So is also Yankee, I apprehend; though it has been said (Godley's Letters from America) that the term 'Yankees' is to be traced back, through an imaginary form, Yengees, to the word English. The Red Man calls the Yankee' Keetchi Mokoman Big Knife (see K. p. 367).

==

To give you the sense, one

Would certainly meeter

Translate water-ven'son.

Yes: 'twere surely more meat-like and possibly neater.

With the tale, how the whitefish came to be created,

The ancient Crane-totem is associated.

The stories are one, from the same epoch dated.
And now for the tale: hear it faithfully stated,
As 'tis by the old story-tellers related.

1.

The Wigwam in the Far North.

(1.)

In the far north there dwelt of old

A mighty hunter, keen and bold.

With fair sons twain, and beauteous wife,

He pass'd, I ween, a joyous life.

They ate the meat his arrows brought;

Of the warm furs their garb was wrought.
Far from the haunts of other men,

Their wigwam stood in lonely glen.