Читать книгу Canadian Battlefields, and Other Poems - J. R. Wilkinson - Страница 18

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The Ojibways from a distance

Marked the slaughter of their game,

And their untamed fiery spirits

With revenge were all aflame.

And Mitwaos, their brave leader,

Summoned his chiefs once more;

Their souls were fiercely chafing,

And their savage hearts were sore.

And as bursts a pent-up torrent

They pronounce for instant war

Not one dissenting chieftain

The unity to mar.

The runners go swiftly forward

The braves to summon now;

And there’s hurried preparation,

And sternness on each brow.

The young and fearless warriors

Meet in the cedar shade

The tender Indian maiden,

And farewells are quickly made.

And the stern, unbending chieftain

Clasps his true-hearted wife,

And kisses his dear papooses,

And girds him for the strife.

Their dauntless leader, Mitwaos,

Who to death will do his part,

Seeks his wife, the Singing Redbird,

And folds her to his heart.

Ah! those heathen souls are tender

For children, wife, or mother,

Their nation, and a father’s love,

For sister and for brother.

To the south of the Indian Fields

Their rendezvous is made,

Where the vines and the cedars cluster,

And deeper glooms the shade.

Here gather fast the Ojibways,

Just at the twilight’s close,

To await the dawn’s pale glimmer

To fall upon their foes.

Now all girted up with wampum,

With scalping-knife and spear,

With tomahawk, bow and arrows,

The foe they do not fear.

And each chief hath his allotment

Of braves to do his will;

And well they know how to attack

With cunning and with skill.

Directed all by Mitwaos,

Whose plans are now complete,

Each one his post of duty knows,

And how the foe to meet.

Then at the lonesome midnight hour,

When the world ’s wrapped in sleep,

The Ojibways form for battle,

And on the foeman creep.

Proud Mitwaos in the centre,

The whole at his command;

Leaping Panther with the right wing,

Who like a rock will stand;

And Lone Wolf with the left wing,

The red men love him well,

And many an act of daring

His nation of him tell.

The signal, an owl hoot, given,

And stealthily through the gloom

They move forward in position

To victory or their doom.

Aye, noiselessly gliding onward

Through darkness dense and still,

By the signal of the hooting owl

Or the cry of whippoorwill.