Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/216

 628 Non-English Writings II entirely within the province of faithful translation to express all the subtleties of Indian thought in this connection, the Indian's sense of the forces of nature, cloud, wind, and rain as being nearer to God than he is, and of his power over them through the attainment of mystic purity of heart and oneness of thought. The one convention of Indian verse which must not be broken is also the convention of Imagism, that the de- scriptive phrases must not merely describe, but must witness to something that has occurred in the soul of the singer. A little later in this same sequence this is even more clearly in- dicated. The women sing We are using our hearts, meaning in full : With deep sincerity We join our hearts To the hearts of the Mid^ Brethren To find our sky again. With our hearts Made pure by singing We uphold the hearts Of our Mid^ Brethren Seeking our sky. Any number of interesting observations of the co-ordinate development of writing and poetry could be made from the study of this single ceremony, and the relation of both to their forest environment. In both there is that tendency, always so clearly marked in a complicated environment, to take the part for the whole, the leaf for the tree, the track of the bear's foot for the bear, the reaching hand for the aspiring spirit of man. It is this suggested relation between literary form and the land which produced it, which gives point to a choice of the Hako ceremony of the Pawnees for analysis. Also, thanks to Alice Fletcher, ' it is the best studied of Amerind rituals. The word Hako refers to the pulsating voice of the drum, the voice not only of the singers but the voice of all things, the corn, the eagle, the feathered stems, everything that partakes of the sacred function. ' See Bibliography.