Читать онлайн «The Song of Hiawatha»
Автор Генри Лонгфелло
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Song of Hiawatha
In the entire history of American poetry, Longfellow's Hiawatha is unique in the equal favor it has found with the critics and with the public. At its first publication, nearly half a century ago, it was hailed by the best critics, not only in this country but in Europe, as the finest work of its author, and, in the phrase of one, " the most considerable poem that has appeared for some years in the English tongue," and this when the great Victorian group was in its prime. Its popular reception was even more remarkable, more than fifty thousand copies being sold in the first two years, while since then its readers have reached well into the millions. It has become one of the best-loved poems in the language, one of the imaginative treasures of the English race.
This new popular edition, illustrated by three artists famous for their success in dealing with Indian characters and scenes, Messrs. Frederic Remington, N. C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish, will, it is to be hoped, find favor with readers new and old.
4 Park Street, Boston September, 1911
INTRODUCTION
Should you ask me, whence these stories ? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest, With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers, With their frequent repetitions, And their wild reverberations, As of thunder in the mountains ? I should answer, I should tell you, " From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland, From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer. "
Should you ask where Nawadaha Found these songs so wild and wayward, Found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you, " In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle !
" All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands, In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa !"
If still further you should ask me, Saying, " Who was Nawadaha ? Tell us of this Nawadaha," I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow.
" In the Vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley, By the pleasant water-courses, Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the corn-fields, And beyond them stood the forest, Stood the groves of singing pine-trees, Green in Summer, white in Winter, Ever sighing, ever singing.
" And the pleasant water-courses, You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the Spring-time, By the alders in the Summer, By the white fog in the Autumn, By the black line in the Winter; And beside them dwelt the singer, In the Vale of Tawasentha, In the green and silent valley.
