| |
| WHEN the summer harvest was gather’d in, | |
| And the sheaf of the gleaner grew white and thin, | |
| And the ploughshare was in its furrow left, | |
| Where the stubble land had been lately cleft, | |
| An Indian hunter, with unstrung bow, | 5 |
| Look’d down where the valley lay stretch’d below. | |
| |
| He was a stranger there, and all that day | |
| Had been out on the hills, a perilous way, | |
| But the foot of the deer was far and fleet, | |
| And the wolf kept aloof from the hunter’s feet, | 10 |
| And bitter feelings pass’d o’er him then, | |
| As he stood by the populous haunts of men. | |
| |
| The winds of autumn came over the woods | |
| As the sun stole out from their solitudes, | |
| The moss was white on the maple’s trunk, | 15 |
| And dead from its arms the pale vine shrunk, | |
| And ripened the mellow fruit hung, and red | |
| Where the tree’s wither’d leaves round it shed. | |
| |
| The foot of the reaper moved slow on the lawn, | |
| And the sickle cut down the yellow corn,— | 20 |
| The mower sung loud by the meadow side, | |
| Where the mists of evening were spreading wide, | |
| And the voice of the herdsman came up the lea, | |
| And the dance went round by the greenwood tree. | |
| |
| Then the hunter turned away from that scene, | 25 |
| Where the home of his fathers once had been, | |
| And heard by the distant and measured stroke, | |
| That the woodman hew’d down the giant oak, | |
| And burning thoughts flash’d over his mind | |
| Of the white man’s faith, and love unkind. | 30 |
| |
| The moon of the harvest grew high and bright, | |
| As her golden horn pierced the cloud of white,— | |
| A footstep was heard in the rustling brake, | |
| Where the beech overshadowed the misty lake, | |
| And a mourning voice and a plunge from shore;— | 35 |
| And the hunter was seen on the hills no more. | |
| |
| When years had pass’d on, by that still lake-side | |
| The fisher look’d down through the silver tide, | |
| And there, on the smooth yellow sand display’d, | |
| A skeleton wasted and white was laid, | 40 |
| And ’t was seen, as the waters moved deep and slow | |
| That the hand was still grasping a hunter’s bow. | |
| |
