THE HUNTER'S VISION.

UPON a rock that, high and sheer, Rose from the mountain's breast, weary hunter of the deer

A

Had sat him down to rest,

And bared, to the soft summer air,
His hot red brow and sweaty hair.

All dim in haze the mountains lay,
With dimmer vales between;
And rivers glimmered on their way,
By forests, faintly seen;

While ever rose a murmuring sound,
From brooks below and bees around.

He listened, till he seemed to hear
A strain, so soft and low,
That whether in the mind or ear

The listener scarce might know.

With such a tone, so sweet and mild,
The watching mother lulls her child.

Thou weary huntsman, thus it said,
Thou faint with toil and heat,
The pleasant land of rest is spread
Before thy very feet,

THE HUNTER'S VISION.

And those whom thou wouldst gladly see
Are waiting there to welcome thee.

He looked, and 'twixt the earth and sky,
Amid the noontide haze,

A shadowy region met his eye,
And grew beneath his gaze,

As if the vapours of the air

Had gathered into shapes so fair.

Groves freshened as he looked, and flowers
Showed bright on rocky bank,

And fountains welled beneath the bowers,
Where deer and pheasant drank.

He saw the glittering streams, he heard
The rustling bough and twittering bird.

And friends-the dead-in boyhood dear,
There lived and walked again,
And there was one who many a year
Within her grave had lain,

A fair young girl, the hamlet's pride-
His heart was breaking when she died:

Bounding, as was her wont, she came
Right towards his resting-place,

And stretched her hand and called his name
With that sweet smiling face.

Forward, with fixed and eager eyes,

The hunter leaned in act to rise:

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THE HUNTER'S VISION.

Forward he leaned, and headlong down
Plunged from that craggy wall,

He saw the rocks, steep, stern, and brown,
An instant, in his fall;

A frightful instant—and no more,

The dream and life at once were o'er.

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

MIDST greens

and shades the Catterskill leaps,

From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;

All summer he moistens his verdant steeps

With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs; And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.

But when, in the forest bare and old,

The blast of December calls,

He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.

For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,
In the cold and cloudless night?

Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought
In forms so lovely and hues so bright?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.

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CATTERSKILL FALLS.

'Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood,

A hundred winters ago,

Had wandered over the mighty wood,

When the panther's track was fresh on the snow,

And keen were the winds that came to stir
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.

Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair,
For a child of those rugged steeps;
His home lay low in the valley where

The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps;
But he wore the hunter's frock that day,
And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.

And here he paused, and against the trunk

Of a tall gray linden leant,

When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk
From his path in the frosty firmament,
And over the round dark edge of the hill
A cold green light was quivering still.

And the crescent moon, high over the green,
From a sky of crimson shone,

On that icy palace, whose towers were seen

To sparkle as if with stars of their own;
While the water fell, with a hollow sound,
"Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.

Is that a being of life, that moves

Where the crystal battlements rise?