Uttered such a cry of anguish That the very stars in heaven Shook and trembled with his anguish. Then he sat down, still and speechless, On the bed of Minnehaha. Seven long days and nights he sat there, As if in a swoon he sat there. Then they buried Minnehaha; In the snow a grave they made her, In the forest deep and darksome. "Farewell!" said he. "Minnehaha! Farewell, O my Laughing Water! All my heart is buried with you, All my thoughts go onward with you! Come not back again to labour, Come not back again to suffer. Soon my task will be completed, Soon your footsteps I shall follow To the Islands of the Blessed, To the Kingdom of Ponemah, To the Land of the Hereafter!" Hiawatha indeed remained not much longer with his people, for after welcoming the Black-Robe chief, who told the elders of the nations of the Virgin Mary and her blessed Son and Saviour, he launched his birch canoe from the shores of Big-Sea-Water, and, departing westward, Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapours, Sailed into the dusk of evening. FOOTNOTES: [U] In 1854 Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard. "Evangeline" had been followed by "Kavanagh," a novel of no particular merit, a cluster of minor poems, and in 1851 by the "Golden Legend," a singularly beautiful lyric drama, based on Hartmann van Aue's story "Der arme Heinrichs." Leaving the dim twilight of mediæval Germany, the poet brought his imagination to bear upon the Red Indian and his store of legend. The result was the "Song of Hiawatha," in 1855. Both in subject and in metre the poem is a conscious imitation of the Finnish "Kalevala." It was immensely popular on its appearance, Emerson declaring it "sweet and wholesome as maize." If the poem lacks veracity as an account of savage life, it nevertheless overflows with the beauty of the author's own nature, and is typical of those elements in his poetry which have endeared his name to the English-speaking world. With the exception of "Evangeline," it is the most popular of Longfellow's works. LUCRETIUS[V] On the Nature of Things _I.--The Invocation and the Theme_