METEMPSYCHOSIS.

I was a huntsman in my youth, and knew

Each bird and beast that haunts the forest tall,

Or wings the air, hard by the water-fall.

Over the plain and up the mountain blue

My twanging bow was heard, my arrows flew.

My bowstring now is rent, my arrows all

Like spears that from the withered pine-cones fall,

Have from my shrunken quiver vanished too.

Yet sometimes o’er me steals the olden mood,

And wandering in the forest deep and dark,

I greet each old familiar tree and mark,

Each spot whereon the lovely quarry stood,

While faintly through my withered veins once more

Leaps the triumphant thrill I knew of yore.

I shot an arrow through the wood one day

In idle sport, and following where it led,

I found a doe that I had raised and fed,

Stricken, and bleeding fast her life away,

Her tender fawn transfixed beside her lay;

One random shaft two happy lives had sped.

The dry leaves rustled to my startled tread,

And filled my fluttering heart with strange dismay;

For gazing in those failing eyes my soul

Found there another soul, its very twin;

Unseen for years, but bowered deep within

The heart’s alcove,—oh, lost beyond control!

Those murdered eyes still gaze as from a glass

Framed in with bloody leaves and trampled grass.