SECTION XIV (continued 2)
Reading edition
THE RED GOD
Now the Four-way Lodge is opened: Now the hunting winds are loose, Now the Smokes of Spring go up to clear the brain; Now the young men's hearts are troubled for the whisper of the trues, Now the Red Gods make their medicine again! Who hath seen the beaver busied? Who hath watched the black-tail mating? Who hath lain alone to hear the wild goose cry? Who hath worked the chosen waters where the ouananiche is waiting? Or the sea-trout's jumping crazy for the fly? Who hath smelled wood-smoke at twilight? Who hath smelled the birch log burning? Who is quick to read the noises of the night? Let him follow with the others, for the young men's feet are turning To the camps of proved desire and known delight! Do you know the blackened timber? Do you know that racing stream With the raw, right-angled log-jam at the end? And the bar of sun-warmed shingle where a man may bask and dream To the click of shod canoe-poles round the bend? It is there that we are going with our rods and reels and traces To a silent, smoky Indian that we know, To a couch of new-pulled hemlock with the starlight on our faces, For the Red Gods call us out and we must go! He must go—go—go away from here! On the other side the world he's overdue. 'Send your road is clear before you when the old spring-fret comes o'er you And the Red Gods call for you!
—Rudyard Kipling.
LOON WITH NEST From Group in American Museum of Natural History
