"This is the song of its building!"


Some of the songs of war and death are quite Ossianic in
style, and yet they appear to be accurate translations.[71]

The comparatively elevated style of such poems need not cast doubt upon
them. The first European who wrote about the songs of the natives of
America, who was none other than the witty and learned Montaigne, paid a
high tribute to their true poetic spirit. Montaigne knew a man who had
lived among the Tupis of Brazil for ten or twelve years, and had learned
their language and customs. He remembered several of their songs of war
and love, and translated them to gratify the insatiable thirst for
knowledge of the famous essayist. The refrain of one of them, supposed
to be addressed to one of those beautiful serpents of the tropical
forests, ran thus:--

"O serpent, stay! stay, O serpent! that thy painted skin may serve my
sister as a pattern for the design and form of a rich cord, which I may
give to my love; for this favor, may thy beauty and grace be esteemed
beyond those of all other serpents."


"I have had enough to do with poetry," comments Montaigne on this
couplet, "to say about this that not only is there nothing barbarous in
this fancy, but that it is altogether worthy of Anacreon." Such is his
enthusiasm, indeed, that he finds in this simple and faithful expression
of sentiment the highest form of poesy; "the true, the supreme, the
divine; that which is above rules and beyond reasoning."[72]