With head erect, and eye of fear,
And trembling, quick-extended ear.
Still as the serpent’s hushed advance,
The hunter, with unmoving glance,
Wound on to where a beech-tree lay
Half buried in the snowy sand:
He crouches ’neath its sapless spray
To nerve his never-failing hand.
A whiz—a start—her rolling eye
Hath caught the danger lurking nigh.