TO A WILD DEER.

105

TO A WILD DEER.

FIT couch of repose for a pilgrim like thee!
Magnificent prison enclosing the free!

With rock wall-encircled-with precipice crowned-
Which, awoke by the sun, thou canst clear at a bound.
'Mid the fern and the heather kind Nature doth keep
One bright spot of green for her favorite's sleep;
And close to that covert as clear as the skies

When their blue depths are cloudless, a little lake lies,) Where the creature at rest can his image behold, Looking up through the radiance as bright and as

bold!

How lonesome! how wild! yet the wildness is rife
With the stir of enjoyment—the spirit of life.
The glad fish leaps up in the heart of the lake,
Whose depths at the sullen plunge sullenly quake!
Elate on the fern-branch the grasshopper sings,
And away in the midst of his roundelay springs;
'Mid the flowers of the heath, not more bright than

himself,

The wild bee is busy, a musical elf!

Then starts from his labor, unwearied and gay,

And circling the antlers, booms far, far away.)

While high up the mountains, in silence remote,
The cuckoo unseen is repeating his note,
And mellowing Echo, on watch in the skies,
Like a voice from a loftier climate replies,
With wild branching antlers, a guard to his breast,
There lies the wild creature, even stately in rest;
'Mid the grandeur of Nature, composed and serene,
And proud in his heart of the mountainous scene,
He lifts his calm eye to the eagle and raven,

At noon sinking down on smooth wings to their haven,

As if in his soul the bold animal smiled

To his friends of the sky, the joint-heirs of the wild.

WILSON.

AUTUMN.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves

run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd and plump the hazel-shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy
cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes, whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swarth and all its twinèd flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

KEATS.

THE

POETRY OF WINTER.