Come out, O Little Moccasins, and frolic on the snow!
Come out, O tiny beaded feet, and twinkle in the light!
I’ll play the old Red River reel, you used to love it so:
Awake, O Little Moccasins, and dance for me to—night!
Your hair was all a gleamy gold, your eyes a corn—flower blue;
Your cheeks were pink as tinted shells, you stepped light as a fawn;
Your mouth was like a coral bud, with seed pearls peeping through;
As gladdening as Spring you were, as radiant as dawn.
Come out, O Little Moccasins! I’ll play so soft and low,
The songs you loved, the old heart—songs that in my mem’ry ring;
O child, I want to hear you now beside the campfire glow!
With all your heart a—throbbing in the simple words you sing.
For there was only you and I, and you were all to me;
And round us were the barren lands, but little did we fear;
Of all God’s happy, happy folks the happiest were we. . . .
(Oh, call her, poor old fiddle mine, and maybe she will hear!)
Your mother was a half—breed Cree, but you were white all through;
And I, your father was—but well, that’s neither here nor there;
I only know, my little Queen, that all my world was you,
And now that world can end to—night, and I will never care.
For there’s a tiny wooden cross that pricks up through the snow:
(Poor Little Moccasins! you’re tired, and so you lie at rest.)
And there’s a grey—haired, weary man beside the campfire glow:
(O fiddle mine! the tears to—night are drumming on your breast.)
Other works by Robert W. Service...
