Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/160
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Of others, soft and white and very tender.One forward step . . . another . . . a quick look back!—Another step . . . another . . . and lo! the eyesFlutter and droop before a flaming symbol,The strong knees break before a blazoned altarGlimmering its tapestries in the candle-light,The high head beaten down and bending beforeNew wonder-working images of gold.
And thus the black-robes brought you into the houseWherein they kept their God, a house of logs,Square-hewn, and thirty feet by forty. They stroveTo put before you food, and purple trappings—Oh, how they walked you up and down in the vestry,Proudly resplendent in your white man's raiment,Glittering and gorgeous, the envy of your tribe:Your stiff silk hat, your scarlet sash, your shoesShining and squeaking glorious with newness!Yet even unto the end—those blood-stained nightsOf the sickness-on-the-lung; that bitter dayOn the Barking Rock, when I packed you down from campAt Split-hand Falls to the fort at Sleepy-eye;While, drop by drop, your life went trickling out,As sugar-sap that drips on the birch-bark bucketAnd finally chills in the withered maple heartAt frozen dusk: even unto the end—When the mission doctor, framed by guttering candles,Hollowly tapped his hooked-horn finger hereAnd there upon your bony breast, like a wood-birdPecking and drumming on a rotten trunk—Even unto this end I never knewWhich part of you was offering the holy prayers—The chanting mouth, or the eyes that gazed beyondThe walls to a far land of windy valleys.And sometimes, when your dry slow lips were movingTo perfumed psalms, I could almost, almost seeYour pagan soul aleap in the fire-light, naked,
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