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), George Gales's Upper Mississippi: or, Historical Sketches of the Mound-Builders, The Indian Tribes, and the Progress of Civilization in the North-West (1867), and "The Spirit Raccoon," a Ho-Chunk narrative of Lake Mendota by a storyteller once known, collected by Charles E. Brown and the Folklore Section of the Federal Workers' Project in Wisconsin in Wisconsin Indian Place Legends (1936).
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:
A MOUND upon the headland, that was broad and high.
Was, among many others, taught by Pythagoras and Plato.
The tracks of an animal, unmistakably those of a raccoon.
The terror of the raider, captivity and shame.
The fact that many modern Indians have names that can not.
From this legend Lake Mendota obtained its Indian name.
And hung it with helmets, with byrnies a-sheen.
According to that, such chiefs must go without honor to.
There is another version of this story in which the.
Laid their Lord beloved, weeping in their dearth.
Entirely without evidence: first that the MOUND-Builders used.
He said that he did not care whether it was a spirit raccoon.
Swart above the blazing. And the roar of flame.
And has been illustrated by the poet Dryden in the following.
Roasted its flesh. Of this he ate heartily, his friend.
