Photo by Dru!(CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Song of the Hills
Being the song of a man and a woman who might have loved
American Indians Poems
This is the song of the Hills
In the hour when they talk together,
When the alpen glow dies down in the west
And leaves the heavens tender;
In the pure and shadowless hour
When the Mountains talk together:
"Fir tree leaneth to fir,
The wind-blown willows mingle;
Clouds draw each to each,
Dissolve, depart, and renew one another;
But the strong Hills hold asunder.
Had we been less we had loved,
We had stooped and been tender;
But our hands are under the earth
For the travail of her harvests,
Upholding the rain-sleeked fields
And the long, brown, fruitful furrow.
Terror taketh the earth
When the Mountains move together.
But ever as winds of spring
Set the meadow grasses caressing,
And the coo-dove calls
And the coo-dove's mate
Resounds in the oak-wood valleys,
We shall thrill with the brooding earth,
We shall turn, touch hands, and remember,
Had we been less, how much we had loved,
How nobly we might have been tender."
<the Yokut Indian>
Yokut Indian: One of the American Indians tribes who lives in the middle of California. Today there are about 2000 enrolled Yokuts in the federally recognized tribe.
Warrior’s Song
Weep not for me, Loved Woman,
Should I die;
But for yourself be weeping!
Weep not for warriors who go
Gladly to battle.
Theirs to revenge
Fallen and slain of our people;
Theirs to lay low
All our foes like them,
Death to make, singing.
Weep not for warriors,
But weep for women!
Oh, weep for all women!
Theirs to be pitied
Most of all creatures,
Whose men return not!
How shall their hearts be stayed
When we are fallen?
Weep not for me, Loved Woman,
For yourself alone be weeping!
<anonymous>
These two poems were collected and translated from tribal languages such as Yokut into English by Mary Austin (1868 - 1934), an American writer and naturalist. There are many other Indian poems in her "The American Rhythm” (1923)and “The Children Sing in the Far West” (1928) other than these two.
You can read the thirteen poems of American Indian in “The Deer-Star” on the old website of Happano.