The Legend of Restless River

INTO the vague unrest
Of Huron's mighty breast,
Runneth the Restless River;
Into the north and west,
Out of the forest's vest,
Its face is set for ever.

Moons wane through spaces white,
As marsh-birds wheel their flight,
As dawns reel into night,
As souls from souls dissever ;
But over the sands to the bay,
Past the forests that pray,
The river it runneth for ever.

It was a curse, and worse,
A curse on the Restless River ;
Moons and moons ago,
Before the ages of snow
And ice and rains that shiver,
Came the curse of the Restless River.

What was this terrible curse ?

Never in tale or verse
Did singer or chief rehearse ;
Warrior sang it never ;
But only the Manitou,
Who knoweth all things, knew
The secret of Restless River.

Where other streams might sleep
In eddies cool and deep,
Beneath where cascades leap
In sunny snowy surges ;
With never a dreaming place,
With never a breathing space,
In one wild tortuous race,
Its maddened tide it urges.

Why this horrible dread?
This fear of the midnight dead,
When the stars peer overhead,
Out of lone spaces winging ?

Men say that the stars and moon
At the silence of midnight noon,
Never mirrored themselves in its singing.

That its song was only a moan
For a sin it could never atone ;
Of all earth's waters, alone
It runs in the darkness for ever ;
And that never the song of bird,
Save only in sadness, is heard
On the shores of the Restless River.

Men say, at noon of day,
In thickets far away
Where skies are dim and grey,
And birches stir and shiver,
That out of the gloomy air
A voice goes up in prayer
From the shores of the Restless River.

Whatever its sin hath been,
Its shores are just as green,
And over it kindly lean
Great forests heavenward growing ;
And its waters are just as sweet,
And its tides more strong and fleet
Than any river flowing.

But for all its outward mirth,
And the glow that spans its girth,
Its voices from air and earth,
Its walls of leaves that quiver ;
Men say an awful curse,
As dread as death, and worse,
Hangs over the Restless River.

And the dreamy Indian girl,
When she sees its waters curl
In many a silver whirl,
Hath pity on Restless River;
For she knoweth that, long ago,
Its tides, that once were slow,
By reason of some dread woe
Went suddenly swift for ever ;
That a dread and unknown curse,
For a sin, or something worse,
Was laid on the Restless River.