The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-09-07
POEMS WORTH READING.


Ger such FURNISHED. mounding water.
Lustrous-tinted with the cleaning,
AS our painting steamer sewers,
Troubles with it's rash propeller,
strews with sparks from belching funnel.
Must the Indian have glided,
In his slim canoe have 1oated
When the mighty lake resplendent .
with the smile OF the Great Spirit
Buoyed him silent and enraptured.
Lisping from his ianguid paddle
Fell the drops like yellow topaz
To the gulf of liquid saffron,
Where he watched these mountain shad'
ows
Dart reflected bands of violet,
Plat them DER the glowing mirror,
As the purple finch's feathers
Might adorn the bronze-smooth bosom
OF a maiden at her bridal,
Half concealing, half disclosing,
lowering with its shy. swift breathing.
Did he try to disentangle
In the Intervening shadows
Those that fell from wrinkled White
face,
Those that leaped from Passaconway
And the looming Dome of Sandwich,
From the wine-dark plumes outspread-
ing
Meath the Ossipees' near rampart7
Past his lips perhaps there murmured
From his throat like far-heard thunder,
One by one the names Of power
That his tribes gave to the mountains,
with their subtle sense of beauty
Like the Greek, yet ever blending
Something of the might Of Hebrew.
In the truces Of his warning,
In the pauses Of his living
Impulse-governed as the heron.
AS the hawk keen-eyed and ruthless,
AS the puma fierce and stealthy.
AS the deer alert and tameless,
Swift as supple trout beneath him,
What the Indians Joy In vision
Such as this bright hour dscloses
To the later, harassed peoples
Who have banished him forever
From the haunts that were his temple?
Fair as twinkling altar candles
Seemed to him the stars first glister;
Like to rising clouds Of incense
wreathing softly glimmering windows,
Many-hued 'twixt darkening mullions,
Seemed the mystic, lake-born vapors
Forming where the western heaven
Glowed rich-tinted through the pine
wood.
With the passing Of the savage,
Stilled by moods so strangely gentle,
! Is this realm bereaved forever
n xuuA -af
From the children close to Nature
As the pebbles to the shore-vash.
AS the red bark to the cedar,
AS this crescent to the moon-shape?
When tonight our hurrying steamer
| Rent the silence with its whistle.
Shrieking as with maniac laughter,
| Were those echoes from the islands,
| From the bays. the rocks, and forests
That rang wailing DER the water,
Moaning as on endless wanderings,
Natures grieving accusation
OF intruders in the regions
That they traverse dull and needless.
Where they lodge with little wonder,
! Where they know themselves but strang
ers?-
| Eye have RACED my sanctuaries,
FILLED my courts with allen clamor,
Sacrificed my wealth to Idols,
IT'LL my kindred, beast and human.
"Flee reproachful from your terror;
,"Therefore is my favor minished
"And we find me no more gracious"
Yet perchance through long devotion,
In repentance and deep gladness,
Once again life might enter
Where the Indian lover fingered
Breast to breast with all this beauty;
In the hush of reverent ardor
Mingling with the soul that trembles
Through the radiant form Of Nature
Thrilling every vivid member
OF her body. ever maiden
Yet surrendered to each wooer,
with no stint of greeting passion,
Who can win her steadfast favor
BY the greatness of his patience,
By his boundiess alteration.
ELIOT WHITE