Harmless were his magic mittens,
Harmless fell the heavy war-club;
It could dash the rocks asunder,
But it could not break the meshes
Of that magic shirt of wampum.
Till at sunset, Hiawatha,
Leaning on his bow of ash-tree,
Wounded, weary, and desponding,
With his mighty war-club broken,
With his mittens torn and tattered,
And three useless arrows only,
Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree.
Suddenly, from the boughs above him
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker:
"Aim your arrow, Hiawatha,
At the head of Megissogwon,
Strike the tuft of hair upon it,
At their roots the long black tresses;
There alone can he be wounded!"
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Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper,
Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow,
Just as Megissogwon, stooping
Raised a heavy stone to throw it.
Full upon the crown it struck him,
And he reeled and staggered forward.
Swifter flew the second arrow,
Wounding sorer than the other;
And the knees of Megissogwon
Bent and trembled like the rushes.
But the third and latest arrow
Swiftest flew, and wounded sorest,
And the mighty Megissogwon
Saw the fiery eyes of Pauguk,
Saw the eyes of Death glare at him;
At the feet of Hiawatha
Lifeless lay the great Pearl-Feather.
Then the grateful Hiawatha
Called the Mama, the woodpecker,
From his perch among the branches,
And in honour of his service,
Stained with blood the tuft of feathers
On the little head of Mama;
Even to this day he wears it,
Wears the tuft of crimson feathers,
As a symbol of his service.
III.�Hiawatha's Life with His People and His Departing Westward
When Hiawatha was returning from his battle with Mudjekeewis he had stopped at the wigwam of the ancient Arrow-maker to purchase heads of arrows, and there and then he had noticed the beauty of the Arrow-maker's daughter, Minnehaha, Laughing Water. Her he now took to wife, and celebrated his nuptials by a wedding-feast at which Chibiabos sang, and the handsome mischief-maker, Pau-Puk-Keewis, danced. Minnehaha proved another blessing to the people. In the darkness of the night, covered by her long hair only, she walked all round
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the fields of maize, making them fruitful, and drawing a magic circle round them which neither blight nor mildew, neither worm nor insect, could invade. About this same time, too, to prevent the memory of men and things fading, Hiawatha invented picture-writing, and taught it to his people. But soon misfortunes came upon him. The evil spirits, the Manitos of mischief, broke the ice beneath his friend Chibiabos, and drowned him; Pau-Puk-Keewis put insult upon him, and had to be hunted down; and the envious Little People, the mischievous Puk-Wudjies, conspired against Kwasind, and murdered him. After this ghosts paid a visit to Hiawatha's wigwam, and famine came upon the land.
Oh, the long and dreary winter!
Oh, the cold and cruel winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river;
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
Into Hiawatha's wigwam
Came two other guests, as silent
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy.
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
At the face of Laughing Water.
And the foremost said, "Behold me!
I am Famine, Buckadawin!"
And the other said, "Behold me!
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!"
And the lovely Minnehaha
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
Shuddered at the words they uttered;
Lay down on her bed in silence.
Forth into the empty forest
Rushed the maddened Hiawatha;
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In his heart was deadly sorrow,
In his face a stony firmness;
On his brow the sweat of anguish
Started, but it froze and fell not.
"Gitche Manito, the Mighty!"
Cried he with his face uplifted
In that bitter hour of anguish,
"Give your children food, O father!
Give me food for Minnehaha�
For my dying Minnehaha!"
All day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of summer,
Of that ne'er-forgotten summer,
He had brought his young wife homeward
From the land of the Dacotahs.
In the wigwam with Nokomis,
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
She was lying, the beloved,
She, the dying Minnehaha.
"Hark!" she said; "I hear a rushing,
Hear the falls of Minnehaha
Coming to me from a distance!"
"No, my child!" said old Nokomis,
"'Tis the night-wind in the pine-trees!"
"Look!" she said; "I see my father
Beckoning, lonely, from his wigwam
In the land of the Dacotahs!"
"No, my child!" said old Nokomis.
"'Tis the smoke that waves and beckons!"
"Ah!" said she, "the eyes of Pauguk
Glare upon me in the darkness;
I can feel his icy fingers
Clasping mine amid the darkness!
Hiawatha! Hiawatha!"
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And the desolate Hiawatha,
Miles away among the mountains,
Heard that sudden cry of anguish,
Heard the voice of Minnehaha
Calling to him in the darkness.
Over snowfields waste and pathless,
Under snow-encumbered branches,
Homeward hurried Hiawatha,
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted;
Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing,
"Would that I had perished for you,
Would that I were dead as you are!"
And he rushed into the wigwam,
Saw the old Nokomis slowly
Rocking to and fro and moaning,
Saw his lovely Minnehaha
Lying dead and cold before him;
And his bursting heart within him
Uttered such a cry of anguish
That the very stars in heaven
Shook and trembled with his anguish.
Then he sat down, still and speechless,
On the bed of Minnehaha.
Seven long days and nights he sat there,
As if in a swoon he sat there.
Then they buried Minnehaha;
In the snow a grave they made her,
In the forest deep and darksome.
"Farewell!" said he. "Minnehaha!
Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!
Come not back again to labour,
Come not back again to suffer.
Soon my task will be completed,
Soon your footsteps I shall follow
To the Islands of the Blessed,
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To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!"
Hiawatha indeed remained not much longer with his people, for after welcoming the Black-Robe chief, who told the elders of the nations of the Virgin Mary and her blessed Son and Saviour, he launched his birch canoe from the shores of Big-Sea-Water, and, departing westward,
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapours,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.
FOOTNOTES:
In 1854 Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard. "Evangeline" had been followed by "Kavanagh," a novel of no particular merit, a cluster of minor poems, and in 1851 by the "Golden Legend," a singularly beautiful lyric drama, based on Hartmann van Aue's story "Der arme Heinrichs." Leaving the dim twilight of medi�val Germany, the poet brought his imagination to bear upon the Red Indian and his store of legend. The result was the "Song of Hiawatha," in 1855. Both in subject and in metre the poem is a conscious imitation of the Finnish "Kalevala." It was immensely popular on its appearance, Emerson declaring it "sweet and wholesome as maize." If the poem lacks veracity as an account of savage life, it nevertheless overflows with the beauty of the author's own nature, and is typical of those elements in his poetry which have endeared his name to the English-speaking world. With the exception of "Evangeline," it is the most popular of Longfellow's works.
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LUCRETIUS[V]
On the Nature of Things
I.�The Invocation and the Theme
Mother of Romans, joy of men and gods,
Kind Venus, who 'neath gliding signs of heaven
Dost haunt the main where sail our argosies,
Dost haunt the land that yieldeth crops of grain,
Since 'tis of thee that every kind of breath
Is born and riseth to behold the light;
Before Thee, Lady, flit the winds; and clouds
Part at thine advent, and deft-fingered earth
Yields Thee sweet blooms; for Thee the sea hath smiles,
And heaven at peace doth gleam with floods of light.
Soon as the fair spring face of day is shown
And zephyr kind to birth is loosed in strength;
First do the fowls of air give sign of Thee,
Lady, and of Thy entrance, smit at heart
By power of Thine. Then o'er the pastures glad
The wild herds bound, and swim the rapid streams.
Thy glamour captures them, and yearningly
They follow where Thou willest to lead on.
Yea, over seas and hills and sweeping floods,
And leafy homes of birds and grassy leas,
Striking fond love into the heart of all,
Thou mak'st each race desire to breed its kind.
Since Thou dost rule alone o'er nature's realm,
Since without Thee naught wins the hallowed shores
Of light, and naught is glad, and naught is fair,
Fain would I crave Thine aid for poesy
Which seeks to grasp the essence of the world.
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On the high system of the heavens and gods
I will essay to speak, and primal germs
Reveal, whence nature giveth birth to all,
And growth and nourishment, and unto which
Nature resolves them back when quite outworn.
These, when we treat their system, we are wont
To view as "matter," "bodies which produce,"
And name them "seeds of things," "first bodies" too,
Since from them at the first all things do come.
THE TYRANNY OF RELIGION AND THE REVOLT OF EPICURUS
When human life lay foully on the earth
Before all eyes, 'neath Superstition crushed,
Who from the heavenly quarters showed her head
And with appalling aspect lowered on men,
Then did a Greek dare first lift eyes to hers�
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First brave her face to face. Him neither myth
Of gods, nor thunderbolt; nor sky with roar
And threat could quell; nay, chafed with more resolve
His valiant soul that he should yearn to be
First man to burst the bars of nature's gates.
So vivid verve of mind prevailed. He fared
Far o'er the flaming ramparts of the world,
And traversed the immeasurable All
In mind and soul: and thence a conqueror
Returns to tell what can, what cannot rise,
And on what principle each thing, in brief,
Hath powers defined and deep-set boundary.
Religion, then, is cast to earth in turn
And trampled. Triumph matches man with heaven.
The profoundest speculations on the nature of things are not impious. Let not the reader feel that in such an inquiry he is on guilty ground. It is, rather, true that religion has caused foul crimes. An instance is the agonising sacrifice of sweet Iphigenia, slain at the altar to appease divine wrath.
"Religion could such wickedness suggest." Tales of eternal punishment frighten only those ignorant of the real nature of the soul. This ignorance can be dispelled by inquiring into the phenomena of heaven and earth, and stating the laws of nature.
II.�First Principles and a Theory of the Universe
Of these the first is that nothing is made of nothing; the second, that nothing is reduced to nothing. This indestructibility of matter may be illustrated by the joyous and constantly renewed growth that is in nature. There are two fundamental postulates required to explain nature�atoms and void. These constitute the universe. There is no tertium quid. All other things are but properties and accidents of these two. Atoms are solid, "without void"; they are indestructible, "eternal"; they are indivisible. To appreciate the physical theory of Epicurus, it is necessary to note the erroneous speculations of other Greek thinkers, whether, like Heraclitus, they deduced all things from one such fundamental element as fire, or whether they postulated four elements. From a criticism of the theories of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, the poet, return to the main subject.
A HARD TASK AND THREEFOLD TITLE TO FAME
How dark my theme, I know within my mind;
Yet hath high hope of praise with thyrsus keen
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Smitten my heart and struck into my breast
Sweet passion for the Muses, stung wherewith
In lively thought I traverse pathless haunts
Pierian, untrodden yet by man.
I love to visit those untasted springs
And quaff; I love to cull fresh blooms, and whence
The Muses never veiled the brows of man
To seek a wreath of honour for my head:
First, for that lofty is the lore I teach;
Then, cramping knots of priestcraft I would loose;
And next because of mysteries I sing clear,
Decking my poems with the Muses' charm.
This sweetening of verse with: "the honey of the Muses" is like disguising unpalatable medicine for children. The mind must be engaged by attractive means till it perceives the nature of the world.
As to the existing universe, it is bounded in none of its dimensions; matter and space are infinite. All things are in continual motion in every direction, and there is an endless supply of material bodies from infinite space. These ultimate atoms buffet each other ceaselessly; they unite or disunite. But there is no such thing as design in their unions. All is fortuitous concourse; so there are innumerable blind experiments and failures in nature, due to resultless encounters of the atoms.
CALM OF MIND IN RELATION TO A TRUE THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE
When tempests rack the mighty ocean's face,
How sweet on land to watch the seaman's toil�
Not that we joy in neighbour's jeopardy,
But sweet it is to know what ills we 'scape.
How sweet to see war's mighty rivalries
Ranged on the plains�without thy share of risk.
Naught sweeter than to hold the tranquil realms
On high, well fortified by sages' lore,
Whence to look down on others wide astray�
Lost wanderers questing for the way of life�
See strife of genius, rivalry of rank,
See night and day men strain with wondrous toil
To rise to utmost power and grasp the world.
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Man feels an imperious craving to shun bodily pain and secure mental pleasure. But the glitter of luxury at the banquets of the rich cannot satisfy this craving: there are the simpler joys of the open country in spring. But the fact is, no magnificence can save the body from pain or the mind from apprehensions. The genuine remedy lies in knowledge alone.
Not by the sunbeams nor clear shafts of day,
Needs then dispel this dread, this gloom of soul,
But by the face of nature and its plan.
PROPERTIES OF ATOMS
Particles are constantly being transferred from one thing to another, though the sum total remains constant. In the light hereof may be understood the uninterrupted waxing and waning of things, and the perpetual succession of existence.
Full soon the broods of living creatures change,
Like runners handing on the lamp of life.
Greater or less solidity depends on the resilience of atoms. Their ceaseless motion is illustrated by the turmoil of motes in a stream of sunlight let into a dark room. As to their velocity, it greatly exceeds that of the sun's rays. This welter of atoms is the product of chance; the very blemishes of the world forbid one to regard it as divine. But the atoms do not rain through space in rigidly parallel lines. A minute swerve in their motion is essential to account for clashings and production; and in the ethical sphere it is this swerve which saves the mind from "Necessity" and makes free will possible. Though the universe appears to be at rest, this is a fallacy of the senses, due to the fact that the motions of "first bodies" are not cognisable by our eyes; indeed, a similar phenomenon is the apparent vanishing of motion due to distance; for a white spot on a far-off hill may really be a frolicsome lamb.
Oft on a hillside, cropping herbage rich,
The woolly flocks creep on whithersoe'er
The grass bejewelled with fresh