Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American poet 1807-1882

USA 1940

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 fenlands Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes." from "The Song of Hiawatha"