THE
COMPLAINT OF A FORSAKEN INDIAN WOMAN”

When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to
continue his journey with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with
Deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food and fuel if the situations of the place
will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to
pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishs
in the Desart; unless he should have the good fortune
to fall in with some other Tribes of Indians. It is unnecessary to add that the
females are equally, or still more, exposed to the
same fate. See that very interesting work Hearne's Journey from Hudson's Bay to
the Northern Ocean When the Northern Lights, as the same writer informs us,
vary their positions in the air, they make a rustling and a crackling noise.
This circumstance is alluded to in the first stanza of the following poem.

Before
I see another day,

Oh let my body die away!

In sleep I heard the northern gleams;

The stars they were among my dreams

In sleep did I behold the skies

I saw the crackling flashes drive;

And yet they are upon my eyes

And yet I am alive.

Before I see another .

My is dead: it knew no pain;

Yet it is alone dead, and I remain day,

Oh let my body die away.

I shall not see another day. All stiff with ice the
ashes lie;

And they are dead, and I will die.

When was well, I wished to live,

fire For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire ;

would die.

And my last thoughts would happy be.

I feel my body die away,

But they to me no joy can give,

No pleasure now, and no desire,

Then here contented will I lie;

Alone I cannot fear to die.

Alas! you might have dragged
me on

Another day, a single one!

Too soon despair o'er me prevailed;

Too soon my heartless spirit failed;

When you were gone my limbs were stronger,

And Oh how grievously I rue,

That, afterwards, a little longer,

My friends, I did not follow you!

For strong and without pain I lay,

My friends, when you were gone away.

My child! they gave thee to
another,

A woman who was not thy
mother.

When from my arms my babe they took,

On me how strangely did he look!

Through his whole body something ran

A most strange something did I see;

-As if he strove to be a man,-

That he might pull the sledge for me.

And then he stretched his arms, how wild!

Oh mercy! like a little
child.

My little joy! my little
pride !

In two days more I must have died

Then do not weep and grieve for me;

I feel I must have died with thee.

Oh wind that o'er my head art flying,

The way my friends their course did bendI,

I should not feel the pain of dying,

Could I with thee a message send

Too soon, my friends, you went away;

For I had many things to
say.

I'll follow you across the snow,

You travel heavily and slow:

In spite of all my weary pain,

I'll look upon your tents again.

My fire is dead, and snowy
white

The water which beside it stood;

The wolf has come to me to-night,

And he has stolen away my food.

For ever left alone I am,

Then wherefore should I fear to die?

My journey will be shortly run,

I shall not see another sun,

I cannot lift my limbs to know

If they have any life or
no.

My poor forsaken child! If I

For once could have thee close to me,

With happy heart I then

This poem of Wordsworth relates a
custom to us of the tribes Indians who he himself explains to us in a note
before the poem: these tribes were nomadic, and followed the hunting through
their habitual routes of migration, therefore, if one of them could not follow
the rate, they could not be allowed to stop nor to delay the rate of the rest,
because all of hunger would die, so that they left to its luck accommodating it
the best thing than they could.

What we see in the poem can be a
tradition, a custom, and therefore daily, but for the sedentary and civilized
societies of century XVIII, could perfectly seem something abnormal. The
complaint of this poor woman left by its disease resonates in our ears like a
supernatural action and without mercy: single and destitute, and in addition
separated to its son, so that it dies in solitude. And what it hits to us more
it is that the real complaint is not for being left, since for her he is
something normal, is its tradition. Complaint to still follow
itself alive, by not to have dismissed of its son, etc. By the circumstances of its abandonment.

The poem is one `stanzaic ode' composed by stanzas of 10 verses with rime aa bb cdcd
ee. In first stanza, Wordsworth shows us the woman,
prepared to die. In order to give a supernatural touch him it speaks to us,
already in this first stanza, of the Lights of the Norte'savage,
and how it has seen them and heard move by the sky, that is something real but
with a fairy tale air and it gives to the poem the tone him that the poet
looked for: something existing that sounds different, magical and inexplicable.

As of that
moment, India
tells the history us of its abandonment. Its complaint is like a goodbye that
it would like to make arrive at his. It enormously hurts to have seen to him
how they gave his son to another woman, and one imagines to have seen in the
eyes of his baby the desire of being greater to be able to drag his sleigh. It
is clear that that is not possible, although is probable that the baby watched
it wanting to go with her, that is its mother, is impossible that a baby knows
that they are leaving his mother to be ill and who if he could drag the sleigh
would not have to leave it back. With these Wordsworth verses it gives an air
him of unreal fantasy that contributes to create the effect that it looks
for.  After that the poor woman goes
to her son to say to him that she must already have dead, but before it would
like to send to them a message with the wind. This image also contributes to
the assignment of Wordsworth because to send messages with the wind well-known
is a topic very, as much that already is something habitual, but even so, is
not real. At least not it sense is in that India gives him, because although it
is certain that the wind transports the words, does not take them beyond one
limited distance, and of course not as far as they must be his is town and its
son

Then it counts us since
she has visited it the wolf to clear all the food to him that it has left, but
to her nothing has done him, which is very strange in a wild and hungry animal.
When an animal as a wolf taken by the hunger approaches to such an extent the
normal thing would not be that it stopped by a little food of trip prepared by
the man, but that would attack the people in search of its habitual food, the
meat. When causing that India
does not suffer any damage, we found another element false more of the
situation than it has developed the poet.

With these elements in particular
and the tone of all the Wordsworth poem it obtains its
intention.