For, jaded now, and spent with toil,
Embossed with foam, and dark with soil,
While every gasp with sobs he drew,
The laboring stag strained full in view.
Two dogs of black St. Hubert's breed,
Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,
Fast on his flying traces came,

And all but won that desperate game;
For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch,
Vindictive toiled the bloodhounds stanch;
Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
Nor farther might the quarry strain.
Thus up the margin of the lake,
Between the precipice and brake,
O'er stock and rock their race they take.

The hunter marked that mountain high,
The lone lake's western boundary,
And deemed the stag must turn to bay,
Where that huge rampart barred the way;
Already glorying in the prize,
Measured his antlers with his eyes;
For the death-wound and death-halloo
Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew ;
But thundering as he came prepared,
With ready arm and weapon bared,
The wily quarry shunned the shock,
And turned him from the opposing rock;
Then, dashing down a darksome glen,
Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
In the deep Trosachs' wildest nook
His solitary refuge took.

There while, close couched, the thicket shed
Cold dews and wild-flowers on his head,
He heard the baffled dogs in vain
Rave through the hollow pass amain,
Chiding the rocks that yelled again.

Close on the hounds the hunter came,
To cheer them on the vanished game;
But, stumbling in the rugged dell,
The gallant horse exhausted fell.
The impatient rider strove in vain
To rouse him with the spur and rein,
For the good steed, his labors o'er,
Stretched his stiff limbs, to rise no more;
Then, touched with pity and remorse,
He sorrowed o'er the expiring horse:
"I little thought, when first thy rein
I slacked upon the banks of Seine,
That Highland eagle e'er should feed
On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed!
Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day,
That costs thy life, my gallant gray!"

Then through the dell his horn resounds, From vain pursuit to call the hounds.

Back limped, with slow and crippled pace,
The sulky leaders of the chase ;
Close to their master's side they pressed,
With drooping tail and humbled crest;
But still the dingle's hollow throat
Prolonged the swelling bugle-note.
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream,
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo seemed an answering blast ;
And on the hunter hied his way,
To join some comrades of the day;
Yet often paused, so strange the road,
So wondrous were the scenes it showed.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart 's in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birthplace of valor, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with

snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods; Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not

here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

ROBERT BURNS.

THE STAG HUNT.

FROM "THE SEASONS: AUTUMN."

THE stag too, singled from the herd where long
He ranged, the branching monarch of the shades,
Before the tempest drives. At first, in speed
He, sprightly, puts his faith; and, roused by
fear,

Gives all his swift aerial soul to flight.
Against the breeze he darts, that way the more
To leave the lessening murderous cry behind :
Deception short! though fleeter than the winds
Blown o'er the keen-aired mountain by the north,
He bursts the thickets, glances through the
glades,

And plunges deep into the wildest wood,

If slow, yet sure, adhesive to the track
Hot-steaming, up behind him come again
The inhuman rout, and from the shady depth
Expel him, circling through his every shift.
He sweeps the forest oft; and sobbing sees
The glades, mild opening to the golden day,
Where, in kind contest, with his butting friends
He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy.
Oft in the full-descending flood he tries
To lose the scent, and lave his burning sides;
Oft seeks the herd; the watchful herd, alarmed,
With selfish care avoid a brother's woe.
What shall he do? His once so vivid nerves,
So full of buoyant spirit, now no more
Inspire the course; but fainting breathless toil,

Sick, seizes on his heart: he stands at bay;
And puts his last weak refuge in despair.
The big round tears run down his dappled face;
He groans in anguish; while the growling pack,
Blood-happy, hang at his fair jutting chest,
And mark his beauteous checkered sides with gore.

JAMES THOMSON.

HART-LEAP WELL.

"Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water about five miles

from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that

leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a

remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the mớnuments spoken of in the second part of the following poem, which monuments do now exist [1800] as I have there described them."THE AUTHOR.

PART FIRST.

THE knight had ridden down from Wensley
Moor,

With the slow motion of a summer's cloud;
And now, as he approached a vassal's door,
"Bring forth another horse!" he cried aloud.
"Another horse!"-That shout the vassal heard,
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray;
Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.
Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes;
The horse and horseman are a happy pair;
But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,
There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall,
That as they galloped made the echoes roar;
But horse and man are vanished, one and all;
Such race, I think, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as the veering wind, Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain :

The knight hallooed, he cheered and chid them on
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern;
But breath and eyesight fail; and, one by one,
The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern.

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?
The bugles that so joyfully were blown?

- This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ; Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.

The poor hart toils along the mountain-side;
I will not stop to tell how far he fled,
Nor will I mention by what death he died;
But now the knight beholds him lying dead.
Dismounting, then, he leaned against a thorn ;
He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy :
He neither cracked his whip, nor blew his horn,
But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious feat;
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned,
And white with foam as if with cleaving sleet.

Another monument shall here be raised;

Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered,
A cup of stone received the living well;
Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared,
And built a house of pleasure in the dell.

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall
With trailing plants and trees were intertwined, -
Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer days were long,
Sir Walter led his wondering paramour;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song
Made merriment within that pleasant bower.

The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time,
And his bones lie in his paternal vale. —
But there is matter for a second rhyme,
And I to this would add another tale.

PART SECOND.

THE moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair,
It chanced that I saw standing in a dell
Three aspens at three corners of a square;
And one, not four yards distant, near a well.

What this imported I could ill divine :
And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,
I saw three pillars standing in a line,
The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.

The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head ;
Half wasted the square mound of tawny green;
So that you just might say, as then I said,
"Here in old time the hand of man hath been."

I looked upon the hill both far and near,
More doleful place did never eye survey;
It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,
And nature here were willing to decay.

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired,
Came up the hollow; — him did I accost,
And what this place might be I then inquired.

The shepherd stopped, and that same story told
Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed.
"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old!
But something ails it now; the spot is curst.
"You see these lifeless stumps of aspen-wood,
Some say that they are beeches, others elms,
These were the bower; and here a mansion stood,
The finest palace of a hundred realms !

"The arbor does its own condition tell;
You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream ;
But as to the great lodge! you might as well
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
"There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep,
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone;
And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep,
This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

"Some say that here a murder has been done,
And blood cries out for blood; but, for my part,
I've guessed, when I've been sitting in the sun,
That it was all for that unhappy hart.

"What thoughts must through the creature's brain have past!

Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, Are but three bounds, — and look, sir, at this last! O master! it has been a cruel leap.

"Gray-headed shepherd, thou hast spoken well
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This beast not unobserved by nature fell;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

"The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

"The pleasure-house is dust :- behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

"She leaves these objects to a slow decay,
That what we are, and have been, may be known;
But at the coming of the milder day
These monuments shall all be overgrown.

"One lesson, shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows and what conceals;

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

But, when he gained his castle-door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound all o'er was smeared with gore.
His lips, his fangs, ran blood.
Llewellyn gazed with fierce surprise;
Unused such looks to meet,

His favorite checked his joyful guise,
And crouched, and licked his feet.

Onward, in haste, Llewellyn passed,
And on went Gêlert too;
And still, where'er his eyes he cast,

Fresh blood-gouts shocked his view.
O'erturned his infant's bed he found,
With blood-stained covert rent;
And all around the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.

He called his child,

-

no voice replied, — He searched with terror wild; Blood, blood he found on every side,

But nowhere found his child.

"Hell-hound! my child's by thee devoured,' The frantic father cried;

And to the hilt his vengeful sword
He plunged in Gêlert's side.

Aroused by Gêlert's dying yell,
Some slumberer wakened nigh:
What words the parent's joy could tell
To hear his infant's cry!

Concealed beneath a tumbled heap

His hurried search had missed, All glowing from his rosy sleep,

The cherub boy he kissed.

Nor scathe had he, nor harm, nor dread,
But, the same couch beneath,
Lay a gaunt wolf, all torn and dead,
Tremendous still in death.

Ah, what was then Llewellyn's pain!
For now the truth was clear;
His gallant hound the wolf had slain
To save Llewellyn's heir.

WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER.

A HUNTING WE WILL GO.
THE dusky night rides down the sky,
And ushers in the morn:
The hounds all join in glorious cry,
The huntsman winds his horn,

And a hunting we will go.

And you may look, with naked eye, upon

The ardors of his car;

Vanquish high hills, stem perilous streams perforce,

bolden,

Are making the green leaves golden.

What a brave splendor

Is in the October air! how rich, and clear,
And bracing, and all-joyous! We must render
Love to the Spring-time, with its sproutings
tender,

As to a child quite dear;
But Autumn is a thing of perfect glory,
A manhood not yet hoary.

And you will know the power

Of the brave chase, - and how of griefs the sorest A cure is in the forest.

Or stalk the deer;

The same red lip of dawn has kissed the hills, The gladdest sounds are crowding on your ear, There is a life in all the atmosphere :

Your very nature fills With the fresh hour, as up the hills aspiring You climb with limbs untiring.