are aflame with the fire of the sunset,
From the wide waving fields of wild-rice
--from the meadows of Psin-ta-wak-pa-dan, [a]
Where the geese and the mallards rejoice,
and grow fat on the bountiful harvest,
Came the hunters with saddles of moose
and the flesh of the bear and the bison,
And the women in birchen canoes
well laden with rice from the meadows,
With the tall, dusky hunters, behold,
came a marvelous man or a spirit,
White-faced and so wrinkled and old,
and clad in the robe of the raven.
Unsteady his steps were and slow,
and he walked with a staff in his right hand,
And white as the first-falling snow
were the thin locks that lay on his shoulders.
Like rime-covered moss hung his beard,
flowing down from his face to his girdle;
And wan was his aspect and weird;
and often he chanted and mumbled
In a strange and mysterious tongue,
as he bent o'er his book in devotion.
Or lifted his dim eyes and sung,
in a low voice, the solemn "_Te Deum_."
Or Latin, or Hebrew, or Greek
--all the same were his words to the warriors,--
All the same to the maids
and the meek, wide-wondering-eyed, hazel-brown children.