While the chewink’s flute, like a minstrel’s lute,
Trilled clear in the balm of the softening day.
Oh, that life was good in the opening wood,
As our brothers’ horns turned velvet to bone,
We wandered at will over hummock and hill,
’Till we found out—alas—we were never alone.
Man found us there, in our deep, forest lair,
And plunge as we would in the thicket’s gloom,
We ran on his track and the sign of his pack,
As he close hunted us down to our doom.