The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face
Lines:48Movement:Romanticism
In that desolate land and lone,Where the Big Horn and YellowstoneRoar down their mountain path,By their fires the Sioux ChiefsMuttered their woes and griefsAnd the menace of their wrath. "Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,"Revenue upon all the raceOf the White Chief with yellow hair!"And the mountains dark and highFrom their crags re-echoed the cryOf his anger and despair. In the meadow, spreading wideBy woodland and riversideThe Indian village stood;All was silent as a dream,Save the rushing a of the streamAnd the blue-jay in the wood. In his war paint and his beads,Like a bison among the reeds,In ambush the Sitting BullLay with three thousand bravesCrouched in the clefts and caves,Savage, unmerciful! Into the fatal snareThe White Chief with yellow hairAnd his three hundred menDashed headlong, sword in hand;But of that gallant bandNot one returned again. The sudden darkness of deathOverwhelmed them like the breathAnd smoke of a furnace fire:By the river's bank, and betweenThe rocks of the ravine,They lay in their bloody attire. But the foemen fled in the night,And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flightUplifted high in airAs a ghastly trophy, boreThe brave heart, that beat no more,Of the White Chief with yellow hair. Whose was the right and the wrong?Sing it, O funeral song,With a voice that is full of tears,And say that our broken faithWrought all this ruin and scathe,In the Year of a Hundred Years.