Coates Kinney

Minnehaha

Ere the Muses transatlantic,
Pale of face, and blue of eye,
Found the wilderness romantic
’Neath the occidental sky,
Think not then was here no worship
Of the beautiful and grand;
Think not Nature had no wooers
In the wild Hesperian land.

Poesy, agrestic maiden,
Wild-eyed, black-haired, haunted here,
Singing of the Indian Aiden,
Southwest of this mortal sphere;
Singing of the good Great Spirit,
Who is in and over all;
Singing sweetly every river,
Mountain, wood, and waterfall.

And this dark Parnassian maiden,
Sang sublimely war’s wild art;
Sang of love and lips love-laden
With the honey of the heart.
But the warsong’s frantic music,
And the deathsong’s roundelay,
And the lovesong’s rude cantata,
Westward, westward die away.

These will with the red tribes perish;
For their language leaves nor scroll
Nor tradition writ, to cherish
Such immortalness of soul.
So, the names that they have given
To the charms of Nature here
Stream, cascade, lake, hill, and valley
Let us fervently revere.

For, though civil life effaces
All else they have gloried in,
Yet this poetry of places
Will remind us they have been :
Therefore, white man, pioneering
Far and farther in the west,
Let the Indian names be sacred,
Though thou ravage all the rest.

Call not cataracted rapid
That has leaped its way and riven,
By his own name, curt and vapid,
That some Saxon boor has given!
But let Nature keep her titles!
Let her name the quick cascade
Minnehaha—Laughing Water—
In the language she has made!

Minnehaha! how it gushes
Like a flow of laughter out!
Minnehaha! how it rushes
Downward with a gleeful shout!
Minnehaha! to the echoes—
Minnehaha! back the same—
Minnehaha! Minnehaha!
Live forever that sweet name!