In her political creed wavering and uncertainty had no place. She
saw our national life from its most salient angles, and, in
current phrase, she saw it whole. In common, therefore, with every
Canadian poet of eminence, she had no fears for Canada, if she be
but true to herself.

Another opinion is not likely to be challenged, viz., that much
of her poetry is unique, not only in subject, but also in the
sincerity of her treatment of themes so far removed from the common
range. Intense feeling distinguishes her Indian poems from all
others; they flow from her very veins, and are stamped with the seal
of heredity. This strikes one at every reading, and not less their
truth to fact, however idealized. Indeed the wildest of them,
"Ojistoh" (The White Wampum), is based upon an actual occurrence,
though the incident took place on the Western plains, and the
heroine was not a Mohawk. The same intensity marks "The Cattle
Thief," and "A Cry From an Indian Wife." Begot of her knowledge
of the long-suffering of her race, of iniquities in the past and
present, they poured red-hot from her inmost heart.

One turns, however, with a sense of relief from those fierce
dithyrambics to the beauty and pathos of her other poems. Take,
for example, that exquisite piece of music, "The Lullaby of the
Iroquois," simple, yet entrancing! Could anything of its kind be
more perfect in structure and expression? Or the sweet idyll,
"Shadow River," a transmutation of fancy and fact, which ends with
her own philosophy:

"O! pathless world of seeming!