it must be true.

For if I but to earth withdraw my eyes,
And fix them on the creature man
To scan his acts, the dear, fond picture dies,
And worse he seems in thought, and air, and plan
Than the hyena, beast that only digs
For food, and not rejoices in the dart,
That stopped the warm blood current of the heart.

Had men but had just what the earth can give,
It would be misery, and lies, and blood,
Pinching and hunger, so that he who lives
But lives, as some poor outcast drowning in a flood.
And then--ah, tell me!--whither goes the soul?

Oh why, ye spirits blest, oh why
Is truth so darkened to the human eye?
As if a sombre cloud all heaven made black,
And the sun shone but through a chink or crack,
Within a wall, where light is but the accident of things,
And not the purport. Truth may be then as the white men write,
And all our tribes in a darkness set, instead of light.

NOCTURNAL GRAVE LIGHTS.

It is supposed to be four days' journey to the land of the dead;
wherefore, during four nights, the Chippewas kindle a fire on the
grave.

Light up a fire upon my grave
When I am dead.
'Twill softly shed its beaming rays,
To guide the soul its darkling ways;
And ever, as the day's full light
Goes down and leaves the world in night,
These kindly gleams, with warmth possest,
Shall show my spirit where to rest
When I am dead.

Four days the funeral rite renew,
When I am dead.
While onward bent, with typic woes,
I seek the red man's last repose;
Let no rude hand the flame destroy,
Nor mar the scene with festive joy;
While night by night, a ghostly guest,
I journey to my final rest,
When I am dead.

No moral light directs my way
When I am dead.
A hunter's fate, a warrior's fame,
A shade, a phantom, or a name,
All life-long through my hands have sought,
Unblest, unlettered, and untaught:
Deny me not the boon I crave--
A symbol-light upon my grave,
When I am dead.

MANITO.

"Every exhibition of elementary power, in earth or sky, is deemed, by
the Indians, as a symbolic type of a deity."--_Hist. Inds._

In the frowning cliff, that high
Glooms above the passing eye,
Casting spectral shadows tall
Over lower rock and wall;
In its morn and sunset glow,
I behold a Manito.

By the lake or river lone,
In the humble fretted stone,
Water-sculptured, and, by chance,
Cast along the wave's expa