iors he took his way,
And followed his heart to his moon-faced maid.
And thus was the lover so long delayed;
And so as he rode with his warriors gay,
On that bright and beautiful summer day,
His bride he met on the trail mid-way.

God arms the innocent. He is there--
In the desert vast, in the wilderness,
On the bellowing sea, in the lion's lair,
In the mist of battle, and everywhere.
In his hand he holds with a father's care
The tender hearts of the motherless;
The maid and the mother in sore distress
He shields with his love and his tenderness;
He comforts the widowed--the comfortless--
And sweetens her chalice of bitterness;
He clothes the naked--the numberless--
His charity covers their nakedness--
And he feeds the famished and fatherless
With the hand that feedeth the birds of air.
Let the myriad tongues of the earth confess
His infinite love and his holiness;
For his pity pities the pitiless,
His mercy flows to the merciless;
And the countless worlds in the realms above,
Revolve in the light of his boundless love.

And what of the lovers? you ask, I trow.
She told him all ere the sun was low--
Why she fled from the Feast to a safe retreat.
She laid her heart at her lover's feet,
And her words were tears and her lips were slow.
As she sadly related the bitter tale
His face was aflame and anon grew pale,
And his dark eyes flashed with a brave desire,
Like the midnight gleam of the sacred fire. [65]
"_Mitawin,_"[66] he said, and his voice was low,
"Thy father no more is the false Little Crow;
But the fairest plume shall Wiwaste wear
Of the great _Wanmdee_ in her midnight hair.
In my lodge, in the land of the tall _Hohe_,
The robins will sing all the long summer day
To the happy bride of the brave Chaske.'"

Aye, love is tested by stress and trial
Since the finger of time on the endless dial
Began its rounds, and the orbs to move
In the boundless vast, and the sunbeams clove
The chaos; but only by fate's denial
Are fathomed the fathomless depths of love.
Man is the rugged and wrinkled oak,
And woman the trusting and tender vine
That clasps and climbs till its arms entwine
The brawny arms of the sturdy stock.
The dimpled babes are the flowers divine
That the blessing of God on the vine and oak
With their cooing and blossoming lips invoke.

To the pleasant land of the brave _Hohe_
Wiwaste rode with her proud Chaske.
She ruled like a queen in his bountiful _tee_,
And the life of the twain was a j