Poetry Archives

Note: The Dakota name for this beautiful lake is Me-ne-a-
tan-ka—Broad Water. By dropping the a before
tanka, we have changed the name to Big Water.


I sit once more on breezy shore, at sunset in this glorious June.
I hear the dip of gleaming oar. I list the singer’s merry tune.
Beneath my feet the waters beat and ripple on the polished stones.
The squirrel chatters from his seat: the bag-pipe beetle hums and drones.
The pink and gold in blooming wold,—the green hills mirrored in the lake!
The deep, blue waters, zephyr-rolled, along the murmuring pebbles break.
The maples screen the ferns, and lean the leafy lindens o’er the deep;
The sapphire, set in emerald green, lies like an Orient gem asleep.
The crimsoned west glows like the breast of Rhuddin [a]
        when he pipes in May,
As downward droops the sun to rest, and shadows gather on the bay.

[a] The Welsh name for the robin.

In amber sky the swallows fly, and sail and circle o’er the deep;
The light-winged night-hawks whir and cry; the silver pike and salmon leap.
The rising moon, the woods aboon, looks laughing down on lake and lea;
Weird o’er the waters shrills the loon; the high stars twinkle in the sea.
From bank and hill the whippowil sends piping forth his flute-like notes,
And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats.
The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores;
The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,—
These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair;
Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff like wine the balmy air.

’Tis well. Of yore from isle and shore
        the smoke of Indian teepees [a] rose;
The hunter plied the silent oar; the forest lay in still repose.
The moon-faced maid, in leafy glade, her warrior waited from the chase;
The nut-brown, naked children played, and chased the gopher on the grass.
The dappled fawn, on wooded lawn, peeped out upon the birch canoe,
Swift-gliding in the gray of dawn along the silent waters blue.
In yonder tree the great Wanm-dee [b] securely built her spacious nest;
The blast that swept the land-locked sea [c]
        but rocked her clamorous babes to rest.
By grassy mere the elk and deer gazed on the hunter as he came;
Nor fled with fear from bow or spear;—”so wild were they that they were
tame.”

[a] Lodges.
[b] Wanm-dee—the war-eagle of the Dakotas.
[c] Lake Superior.

Ah, birch canoe, and hunter, too, have long forsaken lake and shore:
He bade his father’s bones adieu and turned away forevermore.
But still, methinks, on dusky brinks the spirit of the warrior moves;
At crystal springs the hunter drinks, and nightly haunts the spot he loves.
For oft at night I see the light of lodge-fires on the shadowy shores,
And hear the wail some maiden’s sprite above her slaughtered warrior pours.
I hear the sob on Spirit Knob [a] of Indian mother o’er her child;
And on the midnight waters throb her low yun-he-he’s [b] weird and wild.
And sometimes, too, the light canoe glides like a shadow o’er the deep
At midnight, when the moon is low, and all the shores are hushed in sleep.

[a] Spirit Knob is a small hill up on a point in the lake in full view
from Wayzata. The spirit of a Dakota mother whose only child was drowned
in the lake during a storm, many, many years ago often wails at midnight
(so the Dakotas say), on this hill.  So they called it Wa-na-gee
Pa-ze-dan—Spirit Knob. (Literally—little hill of the spirit.)
[b] Pronounced Yoon-hay-hay—the exclamation used by Dakota women
in their lament for the dead, and equivalent to “woe is me.”

Alas—Alas!—for all things pass; and we shall vanish, too, as they;
We build our monuments of brass, and granite, but they waste away.