Page:Song of Hiawatha (1855).djvu/170

160 Lay an oak, by storms uprooted,

Lay the great trunk of an oak-tree,

Buried half in leaves and mosses,

Mouldering, crumbling, huge and hollow.

And Osseo, when he saw it,

Gave a shout, a cry of anguish,

Leaped into its yawning cavern,

At one end went in an old man,

Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly;

From the other came a young man,

Tall and straight and strong and handsome.

"Thus Osseo was transfigured,

Thus restored to youth and beauty;

But, alas for good Osseo,

And for Oweenee, the faithful!

Strangely, too, was she transfigured,

Changed into a weak old woman,

With a staff she tottered onward,

Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly!

And the sisters and their husbands