The dappled fawn is close at hand,
The hind is browsing near,-

And on the larch's lowest bough
The ousel whistles clear;

Rut checks the note

Within its throat,

As choked with sudden fear!

With sudden fear her wormy quest
The thrush abruptly quits;

Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern
The startled cony flits;

And on the larch's lowest bough

No more the ousel sits.

With sudden fear,

The dappled deer

Effect a swift escape;

But well might bolder creatures start

And fly, or stand agape,

With rising hair, and curdled blood,
To see so grim a Shape!

The very sky turns pale above,

The earth grows dark beneath; The human Terror thrills with cold, And draws a shorter breath—

An universal panic owns

The dread approach of DEATH!

With silent pace, as shadows come,
And dark as shadows be,

The grisly Phantom takes his stand
Beside the fallen Tree,

And scans it with his gloomy eyes,

And laughs with horrid glee

THE ELM TREE.

A dreary laugh and desolate,
Where mirth is void and null,
As hollow as its echo sounds

Within the hollow skull:
"Whoever laid this Tree along,
His hatchet was not dull!

The human arm and human tool
Have done their duty well!
But after sound of ringing axe
Must sound the ringing knell ;

When elm or oak

Have felt the stroke,
My turn it is to fell!

No passive unregarded tree,

A senseless thing of wood, Wherein the sluggish sap ascends To swell the vernal bud

But conscious, moving, breathing trunks That throb with living blood!

Ah! little recks the Royal mind,
Within his Banquet-Hall,

While tapers shine, and music breathes,
And Beauty leads the ball,-
He little recks the oaken plank
Shall be his palace wall!

Ah! little dreams the haughty Peer,

The while his falcon fliesOr on the blood-bedabbled turf

The antler'd quarry dies— That in his own ancestral Park The narrow dwelling lies!

But haughty Peer and mighty King

One doom shall overwhelm !

The oaken cell

Shall lodge him well

Whose sceptre ruled a realm— While he who never knew a home Shall find it in the Elm!

The tall abounding Elm that grows
In hedgerows up and down,
In field and forest, copse and park,
And in the peopled town,
With colonies of noisy rooks
That nestle on its crown.

And well th' abounding Elm may grow
In field and hedge so rife,

In forest, copse, and wooded park,
And 'mid the city's strife,-
For every hour that passes by
Shall end a human life!"

The Phantom ends: the shade is gone;
The sky is clear and bright;
On turf, and moss, and fallen Tree,
There glows a ruddy light;

And bounding through the golden fern
The rabbit comes to bite.

The thrush's mate beside her sits,
And pipes a merry lay;
The dove is in the evergreens ;

And on the larch's spray

The fly-bird flutters up and down,
To catch its tiny prey.

THE ELM TREE.

The gentle hind and dappled fawn
Are coming up the glade;

Each harmless furr'd and feather'd thing
Is glad, and not afraid-
But on my sadden'd spirit still
The Shadow leaves a shade:

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed Tree,
Within whose rugged bark

This warm and living frame shall find
Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic Tree which breathed to me

A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground

Within that shady Avenue,

Where lofty Elms abound.

AFAR in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side:
When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast,
And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;
When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,
From the fond recollections of former years;