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Title: The Friendly Spies
Author: Abner Cosens [
More Titles by Cosens]
A Tale of Camp Borden
November, 1916
The main camping ground of the Huron Indians
was near where Camp Borden is now situated.
Where soldiers build their camp fires,
At night there gather 'round
The spirits of the Hurons
From Happy Hunting ground,
No sentry hears their footsteps,
They need no countersigns;
As silent as the moonlight,
They pass within the lines.
Fierce shine their dusky faces
As through the tents they glide,
Once more they smell the war paint
And know a warrior's pride;
The white man's modern weapons
Their ghostly fingers feel,
The guns so swift and deadly,
The long sharp blades of steel.
They nod to one another,
Nor knew so wild a joy
Since, leagued with the Algonquins,
They fought the Iroquois;
Among the sleeping soldiers
They pass the silent night,
And nudge, and smile, and whisper,
"White brother make big fight."
When shafts of light are breaking
Across the eastern sky,
They wrap their mantles 'round them,
And breathe a soft "Good-bye",
Then vanish like the shadows
That lurk among the trees,
The sentry hearing only
The sighing of the breeze.
[The end]
Abner Cosens's poem: Friendly Spies
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