They will gladly
accompany Hiawatha to the land of the Dacotahs, when he woos Minnehaha,
Laughing Water, and hears Owaissa, the bluebird, singing:--
"Happy are you, Hiawatha,
Having such a wife to love you!"
But the guests will be made of stern stuff if their eyes do not moisten
when they hear Hiawatha calling in the midst of the famine of the cold and
cruel winter:--
"Give your children food, O father!
Give us food or we must perish!
Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha."
_Hiawatha_ overflows with the elemental spirit of childhood. The sense of
companionship with all earth's creatures, the mystery of life and of
Minnehaha's departure to the Kingdom of Ponemah, make a strong appeal to
all who remember childhood's Eden.
_The Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858), in the same meter as
_Evangeline_, is a romantic tale, the scene of which is laid
"In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth, the land of the Pilgrims."
We see Miles Standish, the incarnation of the Puritan church militant, as
he
"... wistfully gazed on the landscape,
Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath of the east-wind,
Forest and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue rim of the ocean,
Lying silent and sad in the afternoon shadows and sunshine.
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