Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/638

 FRANCES A. SHAW. Frances A. Shaw is a native of Maine, whose father migrated to Minnesota in the hope of retrieving a shattered fortune, but faihng in that hope took sick and died, leaving his widow and six children in circumstances which required the best exertions of the elder ones to make home comfortable and happy. Miss Shaw had been liber- ally educated, and has turned that education to good account by teaching school. She wrote verses in her earliest youth, and her Muse has found much to engage it, in the stirring legends and romantic scenery of the Upper Mississippi. Her poem " Minne- haha" was originally published in The Genius of the West in 1855. She has con- tributed frequently to Illinois papers, and is at present a resident of Galena, in that State. MINNEHAHA.* 'TwAS a beauteous day in summei^, glad- ness thrilled the balmy air, Lightly danced the zephyrs round me, mu- sic floated every where, I could hear the grand old river, as his waters sought the sea, Rising, falling to the pulses of a weird, strange melody. At my feet a smiling streamlet danced in careless glee along, And with that solemn anthem, blent its lightly gushing song. And I traced its silvery windings till its sparkling waters fell, Bounding, leaping, gaily dancing o'er the rocks, adown a dell, ity of I'ort Snelling, is a beautiful shady glen. Thi-ough this flows a small stream, which at a short distance from its confluence with the Mississippi, gliding over a precip- itous ledge of rocks, forms the " Little Falls," most ap- propriately and poetically called by the Indians, " Min- nehaha," or " laughing waters." There is a kind of wild grandeur abou.t the lai-ger falls of St. Anthony, but Min- nehaha is the very perfection of beauty. (62 Where a scene of wondrous beauty was unfolded to my eyes, That enthralled my raptured spirit in a wild and glad surprise. O'er those rocks, dark-browed and hoary, breaking into feathery spray, Bursting into merry laughter, ran the brook away — away, Till its rippling waters parted, and in light-robed fairy bands, Bounded off the singing wavelets, linking their white, dimpled hands. As with wavy tresses flowing to the breeze they tripped along. They seemed like happy children, warbling forth their ]oy in song. What a robe of silvery whiteness round those dusky lylls they hung ! Wliat a vail of airy lightness round that clitf 's dark brow they flung ! How they wooed the golden sunbeaiUit, till they Ibrmed an arch so bright. That it seemed a ladder stretching upward to the land of light! 2)
 * Five miles Irom St. Anthony, Minnesota, in the vicin-