The Song of Hiawatha

Minnehaha station, Longfellow neighborhood.

Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Should you ask me whence these stories?”

“Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles

Through the green lanes of the country,

Where the tangled barberry-bushes

Hang their tufts of crimson berries

Over stone walls gray with mosses,

Pause by some neglected graveyard,

For a while to muse, and ponder,

On a half-effaced inscription,

Written with little skill of song-craft,

Homely phrases, but each letter

Full of hope and yet of heart-break,

Full of all the tender pathos

Of the Here and the Hereafter;-

Stay and read this rude inscription,

Read this song of Hiawatha!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow