Mapping Indigenous Poetry of North America, 1830-1924

"Moonset" by E. Pauline Johnson

Idles the night wind through the dreaming firs, 
That waking murmur low,
As some lost melody returning stirs 
The love of long ago; 
And through the far, cool distance, zephyr fanned,
The moon is sinking into shadow-land. 

The troubled night-bird, calling plaintively,
Wanders on restless wing; 
The cedars, chanting vespers to the sea,
Await its answering,
That comes in wash of waves along the strand,
The while the moon slips into shadow-land. 

O! soft responsive voices of the night
I join your minstrelsy,
And call across the fading silver light
As something calls to me;
I may not all your meaning understand,
But I have touched your soul in shadow-land. 

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