“The Snow-Tracks Of My Friends I See”

The following incomplete stanzas were evidently written when The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman was being composed. They were all discarded, but have a biographical interest. I assign them to the year 1798.--ED.

The snow-tracks of my friends I see, Their foot-marks do not trouble me, For ever left alone am I. Then wherefore should I fear to die? They to the last my friends did cherish And to the last were good and kind, Methinks ’tis strange I did not perish The moment I was left behind.

Why do I watch those running deer? And wherefore, wherefore come they here? And wherefore do I seem to love The things that live, the things that move? Why do I look upon the sky? I do not live for what I see. Why open thus mine eyes? To die Is all that now is left for me, If I could smother up my heart My life would then at once depart. My friends, you live, and yet you seem To me the people of a dream; A dream in which there is no love, And yet, my friends, you live and move.

When I could live without a pain, And feel no wish to be alive, In quiet hopelessness I sleep, Alas! how quiet, and how deep!

Oh no! I do not, cannot rue, I did not strive to follow you. I might have dropp’d, and died alone On unknown snows, a spot unknown. This spot to me must needs be dear, Of my dear friends I see the trace. You saw me, friends, you laid me here, You know where my poor bones shall be, Then wherefore should I fear to die? Alas that one beloved, forlorn, Should lie beneath the cold starlight! With them I think I could have borne The journey of another night, And with my friends now far away I could have lived another day.