irst star shook in the air.
The sweet pine scented her fawn-skins, and breathed from her braided
hair.
Her crown was of milk-white blood-root, because of the tryst she would
keep,
Beyond the river of beauty
That drifted away in the darkness
Drawing the sunset thro' lilies, with eyes like stars, to the deep.

He watched, like a tall young wood-god, from the red pine that she
named;
But not for the peril behind him, where the eyes of the Mohawks flamed.
Eagle-plumed he stood. But his heart was hunting afar,
Where the river of longing whispered ...
And one swift shaft from the darkness
Felled him, her name in his death-cry, his eyes on the sunset star.

* * * * *

She stole from the river and listened. The moon on her wet skin shone.
As a silver birch in a pine-wood, her beauty flashed and was gone.
There was no wave in the forest. The dark arms closed her round.
But the river of life went flowing,
Flowing away to the darkness,
For her breast grew red with his heart's blood, in a night where the
stars are drowned.

_Teach me, O my lover, as you taught me of love in a day,
Teach me of death, and for ever, and set my feet on the way,
To the land of the happy shadows, the land where you are flown._
--And the river of death went weeping,
Weeping away to the darkness.--
_Is the hunting good, my lover, so good that you hunt alone?_

She rose to her feet like a shadow. She sent a cry thro' the night,
_Sa-sa-kuon_, the death-whoop, that tells of triumph in fight.
It broke from the bell of her mouth like the cry of a wounded bird,
But the river of agony swelled it
And swept it along to the darkness,
And the Mohawks, couched in the darkness, leapt to their feet as they
heard.

Close as the ring of the clouds that menace the moon with death,
At once they circled her round. Her bright breast panted for breath.
With only her own wild glory keeping the wolves at bay,
While the river of parting whispered,
Whispered away to the darkness,
She looked in their eyes for a moment, and strove for a word to say.

_Teach me, O my lover!_--She set her foot on the dead.
She laughed on the painted faces with their rings of yellow and red,--
_I thank you, wolves of the Mohawk, for a woman's hands might f