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Longfellow Henry Wadsworth
«The Song of Hiawatha»

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with its household symbol,With its own ancestral Totem;So that those who follow afterMay distinguish them and know them."And they painted on the grave-postsOn the graves yet unforgotten,Each his own ancestral Totem,Each the symbol of his household;Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,Each inverted as a tokenThat the owner was departed,That the chief who bore the symbolLay beneath in dust and ashes.And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,The Wabenos, the Magicians,And the Medicine-men, the Medas,Painted upon bark and deer-skinFigures for the songs they chanted,For each song a separate symbol,Figures mystical and awful,Figures strange and brightly colored;And each figure had its meaning,Each some magic song suggested.The Great Spirit, the Creator,Flashing light through all the heaven;The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek,With his bloody crest erected,Creeping, looking into heaven;In the sky the sun, that listens,And the moon eclipsed and dying;Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk,And the cormorant, bird of magic;Headless men, that walk the heavens,Bodies lying pierced with arrows,Bloody hands of death uplifted,Flags on graves, and great war-captainsGrasping both the earth and heaven!Such as these the shapes they paintedOn the birch-bark and the deer-skin;Songs of war and songs of hunting,Songs of medicine and of magic,All were written in these figures,For each figure had its meaning,Each its separate song recorded.Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,The most subtle of all medicines,The most potent spell of magic,Dangerous more than war or hunting!Thus the Love-Song was recorded,Symbol and interpretation.First a human figure standing,Painted in the brightest scarlet;`T Is the lover, the musician,And the meaning is, "My paintingMakes me powerful over others."Then the figure seated, singing,Playing on a drum of magic,And the interpretation, "Listen!`T Is my voice you hear, my singing!"Then the same red figure seatedIn the shelter of a wigwam,And the meaning of the symbol,"I will come and sit beside youIn the mystery of my passion!"Then two figures,
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