May 17, 2020

An Indian Love Song

Bertrand N. O. Walker

Light o’ the lodge, how I love thee,
Light o’ the lodge, how I love thee,
Mianza, my wild-wood fawn!
To wait and to watch for thy passing.
On hill-top I linger at dawn.

Glimmer of morn, how I love thee,
Glimmer of morn, how I love thee!
My flute to the ground now I fling,
As you tread the steep trail to the spring,
For thy coming has silenced my song.

Shimmer of moon on the river,
Sheen of soft star on the lake!
Moonlight and starlight are naught;
Their gleam and their glow is ne’er fraught
With such love-light as falls from thine eyes.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 17, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

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“An Indian Love Song” originally appeared in Yon-Doo-Shah-We-Ah (Nubbins) (Harlow Publishing Co., 1924).

Bertrand N. O. Walker, who published his poems under his Wyandot name, Hen-toh, was born in 1870. He is the author of the poetry collection Yon-Doo-Shah-We-Ah (Nubbins) (Harlow Publishing Co., 1924) and Tales of the Bark Lodges (Harlow Publishing Co., 1919), a book of Wyandot animal stories. He died in 1927.

Yon-Doo-Shah-We-Ah (Nubbins)
(Harlow Publishing Co., 1924)

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Thanks to Monica Youn, author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read an extended Q&A about Youn’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.