With wide-spreading antlers, a guard to his breast,
There lies the wild creature, e'en stately in rest!
'Mid the grandeur of Nature, composed and serene,
And proud in his heart of the mountainous scene,
He lifts his calm eye to the eagle and raven,
At noon sinking down on smooth wings to their haven,
As if in his soul the bold animal smiled
To his friends of the sky, the joint-heirs of the wild.
Yes! fierce looks thy nature, e'en hush'd in repose—
In the depths of thy desert regardless of foes.
Thy bold antlers call on the hunter afar,
With a haughty defiance to come to the war!
No outrage is war to a creature like thee!
The bugle-horn fills thy wild spirit with glee,
As thou bearest thy neck on the wings of the wind,
And the laggardly gaze-hound is toiling behind.
In the beams of thy forehead that glitter with death—
In feet that draw power from the touch of the heath-
In the wide-raging torrent that lends thee its roar—
In the cliff that, once trod, must be trodden no more-
Thy trust, 'mid the dangers that threaten thy reign!
But what if the stag on the mountain be slain?
On the brink of the rock-lo! he standeth at bay,
Like a victor that falls at the close of the day;
While hunter and hound in their terror retreat
From the death that is spurn'd from his furious feet;
And his last cry of anger comes back from the skies,
As Nature's fierce son in the wilderness dies.