Through the far-resounding forest,
Through the forest vast and vacant,
Rang that cry of desolation;
But there came no other answer
Than the echo of his crying,
Than the echo of the woodlands,
"MINNEHAHA! MINNEHAHA!"

All day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of summer,
Of that ne'er forgotten summer,
He had brought his young wife homeward
From the land of the Dakotahs;
When the birds sang in the thickets,
And the streamlets laugh'd and glisten'd,
And the air was full of fragrance,
And the lovely Laughing Water
Said with voice that did not tremble,
"I will follow you, my husband!"

In the wigwam with Nokomis,
With those gloomy guests that watch'd her,
With the Famine and the Fever,
She was lying, the beloved,
She the dying Minnehaha.
"Hark!" she said, "I hear a rushing,
Hear a roaring and a rushing,
Hear the Falls of Minnehaha