No flashing loom is hers; no shuttle flies
To do the bidding of her hands and eyes.
No needle glides to designated place,
As weave her sisters overseas the lace.
Hers is a simpler workshop in the leaves;
This is a simpler pattern that she weaves,
Her woof the splinter of the forest tree,
The ash so white, the elm and hickory,
Her dyes the blood of marish weeds and bark
With tints as ruddy as her features dark—
These are her simple implements of toil,
The ready products of the woodland soil.
Yet who shall say her skill is aught the less
Than that of her who weaves the princess' dress?
For generations women of her race
Have woven baskets in this quiet place,
And she who weaves beneath the ancient trees
Reveals the skill of toilsome centuries.
Into the basket weaves she more than wood—
For weaves she in the romance of her blood,
Yea, weaves she in the moonlight and the sun,
The westward's burning rays when day is done,
The verdant tints of winter's evergreen,
The lily's whiteness and the willow's sheen,
The regal purple of her honored chief,
The simple beauty of her God-belief.
So, through its time, the basket that she makes
Shall sing to me of brooks and sylvan lakes,
Shall sing the glory of the vanished Red,
Shall sing a requiem for peoples dead,
Shall sing of tree, of flower and of sod—
Shall sing of Nature and the place of God.
