The following experimental digital documentary poem is composed of citations of William Ellery Leonard's new verse translation of the Old English poem Beowulf (1923), a historical, ethnographic narrative written by Charles E. Brown for the performance of a young Native American Indian woman at the unveiling ceremonies of bronze markers on the Indigenous Ho-Chunk effigy mounds on Observatory Hill at the University of Wisconsin—Madison located in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives (1914), and a letter from Brown to State Architect Mr. Roger C. Kirchoff about the threatened destruction of two linear mounds on the public, land-grant university campus located in the same archives (1938). The linear mounds were destroyed to build an additional men's dormitory on campus.
When this MOUND web page is loaded and/or reloaded, server-side code selects and loads a random collection of lines from a relational database of citations:
Straight should it be settled then by the edge of sword.
Of these lakes which they called Tay cho pera, or the four lakes.
Will be made by your office and the officers of the University.
The Hero of the Halfdanes, Hnaef of Scylding-folk.
Other tribes of red children speaking the same tongue.
In encouraging their preservation. Yours very truly.
Finn did unto Hengest vow, without all strife, on oath.
Multiplied and the Ho chun ga ra grew strong in numbers.
An object lesson in the encouraging of the preservation of the.
By the uncle's shoulder. The lady wept the while.
Friends. At the bidding of my father, at the invitation of.
Autumn. These Indian MOUNDS are of the most ancient works.
Little cause had Hildeburh to praise the Jutemen's troth.
Of this crystal lake, at the foot of this hill. In the long ago.
Will be made by your office and the officers of the University.
