230 то Believe it not-though lonely Thy evening home may be; Float on a summer sea; The wild-flower wreath of feeling, The sunbeam of the heart. THE LOST HUNTER. BY ALFRED B. STREET. NUMBED by the piercing, freezing air, The rifle he had shouldered late His pouch was void of food, The hours were speeding in their flight, And soon the long, keen, winter night Would wrap the solitude. Oft did he stoop a listening ear, His sinuous path, by blazes, wound 232 THE LOST HUNTER. Among trunks grouped in myriads round;— With many a shape grotesquely wrought, The hemlock's spire was seen. An antlered dweller of the wild Had met his eager gaze, And far his wandering steps beguiled Within an unknown maze; Stream, rock, and run-way, he had crossed By which he used to roam; And now, deep swamp and wild ravine, A dusky haze, which slow had crept Faster and faster, till between The trunks and boughs, a mottled screen Of glimmering motes was spread, Like brook o'er pebbled bed. THE LOST HUNTER. The laurel tufts, that drooping hung Close rolled around their stems, And the sear beech leaves still that clung, But hark! afar a sullen moan And bursting with a roar, and shock As o'er, it whistled, shrieked, and hissed, The snow was whirled to eddying mist, And now 'twas swept with lightning flight Like drifting smoke, and now It hid the air with shooting clouds, And robed the trees with circling shrouds, Then dashed in heaps below. Here, plunging in a billowy wreath, The suffering Hunter gasped for breath, As though to whelm him in despair, 233 234 THE LOST HUNTER. Rapidly changed the black'ning air To murkiest gloom of night, At every blast an icy dart Seemed through his nerves to fly, The thundering tempest echoed death, He sunk upon the snow. Reason forsook her shattered throne,- In sunshine, leaves, and flowers: He heard the deer's low bleat, That murmured at his feet. |