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, 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, As though to whelm him in despair, X* 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. Gleamed in the crackling fire, that shed His wife had clasped his hand, and now 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, And scattered round, low points of gre Peering above the snowy scene Told where the thickets stood. In a deep hollow, drifted high A diamond blaze it shown; The little snow-bird chirping sweet Unsullied, smooth, and fair. It seemed like other mounds, where tru And rock amid the wreaths were sunk, But oh! the dead was there. Spring came with wakening breezes bla Earth bursts its winter chains. In a deep nook, where moss, and grass A mother kneeling with her child, That there the lost had died. THE LOST AT SEA BY J. OTIS ROCKWELL. WIFE, who in thy deep devotion Hope no more-his course is done. 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? |