Sweet is the air with the budding haws, and the valley stretching for miles below
Is white with blossoming cherry-trees, as if just covered with lighted snow.
What child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, when spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails and the misty pennon of the east-wind nailed to the mast.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.
The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.
So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.
O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears, Must ache and bleed beneath your load; I, nearer to the wayside inn Where toil shall cease and rest begin, Am weary, thinking of your road!
Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved, In the glory of the sunset, In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!