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Little Moccasins

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.)