"The Quill Worker" by E. Pauline Johnson
light floods and fills,
To the north the open country, southward the
Cyprus Hills;
Never a bit of woodland, never a rill that flows,
Only a stretch of cactus beds, and the wild, sweet
prairie rose;
Never a habitation, save where in the far south-west
A solitary tepee lifts its solitary crest,
Where Neykia in the doorway, crouched in the red
sunshine,
Broiders her buckskin mantle with the quills of
the porcupine.
Neykia, the Sioux chief's daughter, she with the
foot that flies,
She with the hair of midnight and the wondrous
midnight eyes,
She with the deft brown fingers, she with the soft
slow smile,
She with the voice of velvet and the thoughts that
dream the while.—
"Whence come the vague to-morrows? Where
do the yesters fly?
What is beyond the border of the prairie and the
sky?
Does the maid in the Land of Morning sit in the
red sunshine,
Broidering her buckskin mantle with the quills of
the porcupine?"
So Neykia, in the westland, wonders and works
away,
Far from the fret and folly of the "Land of Waking
Day."
And many the pale-faced trader who stops at the
tepee door
For a smile from the sweet, shy worker, and a sigh
when the hour is o'er.
For they know of a young red hunter who often-
times has stayed
To rest and smoke with her father, tho' his eyes
were on the maid;
And the moons will not be many ere she in the red
sunshine
Will broider his buckskin mantle with the quills
of the porcupine.