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| WE are the Ancient People; | |
| Our father is the Sun; | |
| Our mother, the Earth, where the mountains tower | |
| And the rivers seaward run; | |
| The stars are the children of the sky, | 5 |
| The red men of the plain; | |
| And ages over us both had rolled | |
| Before you crossed the main;— | |
| For we are the Ancient People, | |
| Born with the wind and rain. | 10 |
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| And ours is the ancient wisdom, | |
| The lore of Earth and cloud:— | |
| We know what the awful lightnings mean, | |
| Wí-lo-lo-a-ne with arrows keen, | |
| And the thunder crashing loud; | 15 |
| And why with his glorious, burning shield | |
| His face the Sun-God hides, | |
| As, glad from the east, while night recedes, | |
| Over the Path of Day he speeds | |
| To his home in the ocean tides; | 20 |
| For the Deathless One at eve must die, | |
| To flame anew in the nether sky,— | |
| Must die, to mount when the Morning Star, | |
| First of his warrior-host afar, | |
| Bold at the dawning rides! | 25 |
| And we carry our new-born children forth | |
| His earliest beams to face, | |
| And pray he will make them strong and brave | |
| As he looks from his shining place, | |
| Wise in council and firm in war, | 30 |
| And fleet as the wind in the chase; | |
| And why the Moon, the Mother of Souls, | |
| On summer nights serene, | |
| Fair from the azure vault of heaven | |
| To Earth will fondly lean, | 35 |
| While her sister laughs from the tranquil lake, | |
| Soft-robed in rippling sheen; | |
| For the Moon is the bride of the glowing Sun, | |
| But the Goddess of Love is she | |
| Who beckons and smiles from the placid depths | 40 |
| Of the lake and the shell-strown sea. | |
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| We know why the down of the Northland drifts | |
| O’er wood and waste and hill; | |
| And how the light-winged butterflies | |
| To the brown fields summer bear, | 45 |
| And the balmy breath of the Corn-maids floats | |
| In June’s enchanted air; | |
| And when to pluck the Medicine flowers | |
| On the brow of the mountain peak, | |
| The lilies of Té-na-tsa-li, | 50 |
| That brighten the faded cheek, | |
| And heal the wounds of the warrior | |
| And the hunter worn and weak; | |
| And where in the hills the crystal stones | |
| And the turquoise blue to seek; | 55 |
| And how to plant the earliest maize, | |
| Sprinkling the sacred meal, | |
| And setting our prayer-plumes in the midst | |
| As full to the east we kneel,— | |
| The plumes whose life shall waft our wish | 60 |
| To the heights the skies conceal; | |
| Nay, when the stalks are parched on the plain | |
| And the deepest springs are dry, | |
| And the Water-God, the jewelled toad, | |
| Is lost to every eye, | 65 |
| With song and dance and voice of flutes | |
| That soothe the Regions Seven, | |
| We can call the blessed summer showers | |
| Down from the listening heaven! | |
| For ours is the lore of a dateless past, | 70 |
| And we have power thereby,— | |
| Power which our vanished fathers sought | |
| Through toil and watch and pain, | |
| Till the spirits of wood and wave and air | |
| To grant us help were fain; | 75 |
| For we are the Ancient People, | |
| Born with the wind and rain. | |
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