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Through their palisades of pine-trees,
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And the thunder in the mountains,
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Whose innumerable echoes
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Flap like eagles in their eyries;--
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Listen to these wild traditions,
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To this Song of Hiawatha!
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Ye who love a nation's legends,
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Love the ballads of a people,
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That like voices from afar off
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Call to us to pause and listen,
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Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
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Scarcely can the ear distinguish
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Whether they are sung or spoken;--
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Listen to this Indian Legend,
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To this Song of Hiawatha!
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Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
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Who have faith in God and Nature,
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Who believe that in all ages
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Every human heart is human,
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That in even savage bosoms
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There are longings, yearnings, strivings
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For the good they comprehend not,
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That the feeble hands and helpless,
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Groping blindly in the darkness,
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Touch God's right hand in that darkness
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And are lifted up and strengthened;--
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Listen to this simple story,
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To this Song of Hiawatha!
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Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
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Through the green lanes of the country,
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Where the tangled barberry-bushes
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Hang their tufts of crimson berries
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Over stone walls gray with mosses,
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Pause by some neglected graveyard,
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For a while to muse, and ponder
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On a half-effaced inscription,
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Written with little skill of song-craft,
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Homely phrases, but each letter
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Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
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Full of all the tender pathos
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Stay and read this rude inscription,
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Read this Song of Hiawatha!
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On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
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Gitche Manito, the mighty,
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He the Master of Life, descending,
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On the red crags of the quarry
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Stood erect, and called the nations,
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Called the tribes of men together.
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From his footprints flowed a river,
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Leaped into the light of morning,
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O'er the precipice plunging downward
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Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
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And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
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With his finger on the meadow
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Traced a winding pathway for it,
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Saying to it, "Run in this way!"
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From the red stone of the quarry
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With his hand he broke a fragment,
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Moulded it into a pipe-head,
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Shaped and fashioned it with figures;
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From the margin of the river
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Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,
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With its dark green leaves upon it;
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Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
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With the bark of the red willow;
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Breathed upon the neighboring forest,
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Made its great boughs chafe together,
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Till in flame they burst and kindled;
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And erect upon the mountains,
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Gitche Manito, the mighty,
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Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,
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As a signal to the nations.
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And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
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Through the tranquil air of morning,
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First a single line of darkness,
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Then a denser, bluer vapor,
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Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
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Like the tree-tops of the forest,
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Ever rising, rising, rising,
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Till it touched the top of heaven,
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Till it broke against the heaven,
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And rolled outward all around it.
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From the groves of Tuscaloosa,
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From the far-off Rocky Mountains,
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From the Northern lakes and rivers
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All the tribes beheld the signal,
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Saw the distant smoke ascending,
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And the Prophets of the nations
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By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
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Bending like a wand of willow,
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Waving like a hand that beckons,
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Gitche Manito, the mighty,
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Calls the tribes of men together,
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Calls the warriors to his council!"
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Down the rivers, o'er the prairies,
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Came the warriors of the nations,
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All the warriors drawn together
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By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
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To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
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And they stood there on the meadow,
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