The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 1.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

All-uncalled, he dares not show
Empty hands to Manito:
Better gifts he cannot bear
Than the scalps his slayers wear.”

All the while the totem sang,
Lightning blazed and thunder rang;
And a black cloud, reaching high,
Pulled the white moon from the sky.

I, the medicine-man, whose ear
All that spirits hear can hear,—
I, whose eyes are wide to see
All the things that are to be,—

Well I knew the dreadful signs
In the whispers of the pines,
In the river roaring loud,
In the mutter of the cloud.

At the breaking of the day,
From the grave I passed away;
Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang glad,
But my heart was hot and mad.

There is rust on Squando's knife,
From the warm, red springs of life;
On the funeral hemlock-trees
Many a scalp the totem sees.