THE LOST HUNTER.

The laurel tufts, that drooping hung

Close rolled around their stems,

And the sear beech leaves still that clung,
Were white with powdering gems.

But hark! afar a sullen moan

Swelled out to louder, deeper tone,
As surging near it passed,

And bursting with a roar, and shock
That made the groaning forest rock,
On rushed the winter blast.

As o'er, it whistled, shrieked, and hissed,
Caught by its swooping wings,
The snow was whirled to eddying mist,
Barbed, as it seemed, with stings;

And now 'twas swept with lightning flight
Above the loftiest hemlock's height

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,

There, clinging to a limb,

The suffering Hunter gasped for breath,
Brain reeled, and eye grew dim;

As though to whelm him in despair,

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THE LOST HUNTER.

Rapidly changed the black'ning air
To murkiest gloom of night,
Till nought was seen around-below
But falling flakes, and mantled snow
That gleamed in ghastly white.

At every blast an icy dart

Seemed through his nerves to fly,
The blood was freezing to his heart,—
Thought whispered he must die.

The thundering tempest echoed death,
He felt it in his tightened breath;
Spoil, rifle dropped, and slow
As the dread torpor crawling came
Along his staggering, stiff'ning frame,

He sunk upon the snow.

Reason forsook her shattered throne,-
He deemed that summer hours
Again around him brightly shone

In sunshine, leaves, and flowers:
Again the fresh, green, forest sod,
Rifle in hand, he lightly trod,-

He heard the deer's low bleat,
Or couched within the shadowy nook,
He drank the crystal of the brook

That murmured at his feet.

THE LOST HUNTER.

It changed;-his cabin roof o'erspread,
Rafter, and wall, and chair,

Gleamed in the crackling fire, that shed
Its warmth, and he was there;

His wife had clasped his hand, and now
Her gentle kiss was on his brow,

His child was prattling by,

The hound crouched, dozing, near the blaze,
And through the pane's frost-pictured haze
He saw the white drifts fly.

That passed;-before his swimming sight
Does not a figure bound,

And a soft voice with wild delight

Proclaim the lost is found?

No, Hunter, no! 'tis but the streak

Of whirling snow ;-the tempest's shriek―

No human aid is near;

Never again that form will meet

Thy clasped embrace—those accents sweet

Speak music to thine ear.

Morn broke ;-away the clouds were chased,

The sky was pure and bright,

And on its blue, the branches traced

Their webs of glittering white.

Its ivory roof the hemlock stooped,

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THE LOST HUNTER.

The pine its silvery tassel drooped,
Down bent the burthened wood,
And scattered round, low points of green
Peering above the snowy scene

Told where the thickets stood.

In a deep hollow, drifted high

A wave-like heap was thrown;
Dazzlingly in the sunny sky

A diamond blaze it shown;
The little snow-bird chirping sweet
Dotted it o'er with tripping feet,

Unsullied, smooth, and fair.

It seemed like other mounds, where trunk
And rock amid the wreaths were sunk,
But oh! the dead was there.

Spring came with wakening breezes bland,
Soft suns and melting rains,

And touched by her Ithuriel wand,

Earth bursts its winter chains.

In a deep nook, where moss, and grass
And fern-leaves wove a verdant mass-
Some scattered bones beside,

A mother kneeling with her child,
Told by her tears and wailings wild

That there the lost had died.

THE LOST AT SEA

BY J. OTIS ROCKWELL.

WIFE, who in thy deep devotion
Puttest up a prayer for one,
Sailing on the stormy ocean,

Hope no more-his course is done.
Dream not, when upon thy pillow,
That he slumbers by thy side;
For his corse beneath the billow
Heaveth with the restless tide.

Children, who as sweet flowers growing, Laugh amidst the sorrowing rains, Know ye many clouds are throwing

Shadows on your sire's remains? Where the hoarse gray surge is rolling With a mountain's motion on,

Dream ye that its voice is tolling

For your father lost and gone?