Page:Song of Hiawatha (1855).djvu/148

138 "Thus it is our daughters leave us,

Those we love, and those who love us!

Just when they have learned to help us,

When we are old and lean upon them,

Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,

With his flute of reeds, a stranger

Wanders piping through the village,

Beckons to the fairest maiden,

And she follows where he leads her,

Leaving all things for the stranger!"

Pleasant was the journey homeward,

Through interminable forests,

Over meadow, over mountain,

Over river, hill, and hollow.

Short it seemed to Hiawatha,

Though they journeyed very slowly,

Though his pace he checked and slackened

To the steps of Laughing Water.

Over wide and rushing rivers

In his arms he bore the maiden;