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The summer days were in their prime,
The wood-paths dim with somber shade;
The song-birds trill’s their mellow chime,
Gay flow’rets blossom’d in the glade;
Uncut, unclear’d, the virgin woods
Of oak and male fring’d the shore;
While the umbrageous evergreen,
Darkling, in towering height lean’d o'er
Woods, where the raccoon, lynx, and bear,
And dun wolves, made their secret lair.
Up the calm river, as the shades
Of glimmering eve began to creep,
The hunters, in the birch canoe,
With setting-pole and paddle-sweep,
Eager by torchlight to ensnare
The deer, when darkness shroud the air.
Battling the rapids of the stream,
Fair shone the scene in twilight dim;
The feeding ducks burst on the wing,
Or ‘mid the sheltering rushes swim;
The heron flaps his dusky plumes,
The raccoon climbs the nearest tree,
The pied kingfisher startled flee,
The must-rat hastes across the tide,
The woodpecker like arrow dart;
While high o’erhead, on pinions wide,
Eagles the realms of ether part,
But when the hovering shades grow deep
The fire-flies flash athwart the gloom,
The whippoorwills make sad lament,
The frogs in lonely marshes boom;
And now the jack-light on the prow
Illumes the wave with bar of light;
The hunters hear is throbbing now,
Himself unseen behind the smokes,
While the stout oarsman plies his stokes.
Gazing, two dusky forms they see,
Standing knee-deep within the tide;
And now with hoofs they dash the wave
To fright the insects form their side;
Now, from sweet aquatic grass
Whereon they feed, they raise the head,
To watch with curious gaze the flame
Athwart the inky river she;
Then when the red reflected light
Gleams on their glassy eye-balls clear,
The volleying gun disturbs the night,
And dies with gasping moan the deer.
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