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

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 vapors 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 toward 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:

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.

VOL. 1.-17

"New York Mirror," November, 1835.

THE

THE STRANGE LADY.

HE summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,

As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky;

Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling

sound,

An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.

A dark-haired woman from the wood comes suddenly

in sight;

Her merry eye is full and black, her cheek is brown

and bright;

Her gown is of the mid-sea blue, her belt with beads

is strung,

And yet she speaks in gentle tones, and in the English tongue.

"It was an idle bolt I sent, against the villain crow; Fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand; beshrew my erring

bow!"

"Ah! would that bolt had not been spent! then, lady, might I wear

A lasting token on my hand of one so passing fair!"

"Thou art a flatterer like the rest, but wouldst thou take with me

A day of hunting in the wild beneath the greenwood

tree,

I know where most the pheasants feed, and where the red-deer herd,

And thou shouldst chase the nobler game, and I bring down the bird."

Now Albert in her quiver lays the arrow in its place, And wonders as he gazes on the beauty of her face: "Those hunting-grounds are far away, and, lady, 'twere

not meet

That night, amid the wilderness, should overtake thy feet."

"Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine

'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the

vine;

The wild-plum sheds its yellow fruit from fragrant thickets nigh,

And flowery prairies from the door stretch till they meet the sky.

"There in the boughs that hide the roof the mockbird sits and sings,

And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock swings;

A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hop

ples sweep,

Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy

sleep."

Away, into the forest depths by pleasant paths they go, He with his rifle on his arm, the lady with her bow, Where cornels arch their cool dark boughs o'er beds of wintergreen,

And never at his father's door again was Albert seen.

That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,

With howl of winds and roar of streams, and beating

of the rain;

The mighty thunder broke and drowned the noises in its crash;

The old trees seemed to fight like fiends beneath the lightning flash.

Next day, within a mossy glen, 'mid mouldering trunks were found

The fragments of a human form upon the bloody

ground;