"Wakawa, Wakawa, for thee the years
Are red with blood and bitter with tears.
Gone,--brothers, and daughters, and wife,--all gone
That are kin to Wakawa,--but one--but one--
Wakinyan Tanka--undutiful son!
And he estranged from his fathers tee,
Will never return till the chief shall die.
And what cares he for his father's grief?
He will smile at my death,--it will make him chief.
Woe burns in my bosom. Ho, Warriors,--Ho!
Raise the song of red war; for your chief must go
To drown his grief in the blood of the foe!
I shall fall. Raise my mound on the sacred hill.
Let my warriors the wish of their chief fulfill;
For my fathers sleep in the sacred ground.
The Autumn blasts o'er Wakawa's mound
Shall chase the hair of the thistle's head,
And the bare armed oak o'er the silent dead.
When the whirling snows from the north descend,
Shall wail and moan in the midnight wind.
In the famine of winter the wolf shall prowl,
And scratch the snow from the heap of stones,
And sit in the gathering storm and howl,
On the frozen mound, for Wakawa's bones.
But the years that are gone shall return again.
As the robin returns and the whippowil
When my warriors stand on the sacred hill
And remember the deeds of their brave chief slain."