Page:This Canada of ours and other poems.djvu/42

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36
THE WHITE STONE CANOE.

Of his sighing and his moaning,
    When the North winds played upon them.

    Through the gloom of frozen forests,
When the snow lay on the branches,
Bending down the longest branches
Of the hemlock and the cedar,
All alone Abeka wandered,
For his heart was dead within him.
Lonely were his midnight watchings,
Startled by the night owl's screeching,
Or the shrill and dismal music
Of the wolfish pack approaching.
Sometimes silent hours of moonlight
Shed their magic o'er the forest.
And the rabbit, the Wabasso—
Little white one, like the maiden—
Leaped along its beaten pathways,
Paused, and full of timid wonder,
Fixed its two soft eyes upon him.