1 “False,’ they said, “thy Pale-face lover, from the land of waking morn ;
2 Rise and wed thy Redskin wooer, nobler warrior ne’er was born ;
3 Cease thy watching, cease thy dreaming,
4 Show the white thine Indian scorn.’
5 Thus they taunted her, declaring, “He remembers naught of thee :
6 Likely some white maid he wooeth, far beyond the inland sea.’
7 But she answered ever kindly,
8 “He will come again to me,’
9 Till the dusk of Indian summer crept athwart the western skies ;
10 But a deeper dusk was burning in her dark and dreaming eyes,
11 As she scanned the rolling prairie,
12 Where the foothills fall, and rise.
13 Till the autumn came and vanished, till the season of the rains,
14 Till the western world lay fettered in midwinter’s crystal chains,
15 Still she listened for his coming,
16 Still she watched the distant plains.
17 Then a night with nor’land tempest, nor’land snows a-swirling fast,
18 Out upon the pathless prairie came the Pale-face through the blast,
19 Calling, calling, “Yakonwita,
20 I am coming, love, at last.’
21 Hovered night above, about him, dark its wings and cold and dread ;
22 Never unto trail or tepee were his straying footsteps led ;
23 Till benumbed, he sank, and pillowed
24 On the drifting snows his head,
25 Saying, “O! my Yakonwita call me, call me, be my guide
26 To the lodge beyond the prairie–for I vowed ere winter died
27 I would come again, belov
(E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake))
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Night Poems, Autumn Poems, Dreaming PoemsBased on Keywords: pale-face, tepee, redskin, wooeth