POETRY.
A FOREST IDYLL.
I PEERED from out the canvas walls
And saw the golden crescent rise From silent waters, heard the calls Of rousing birds, the far replies: I saw the golden crescent pale, The gradual starlight fade away, And rays of morning pierce the veil That hides the earth from coming day.
I crept among the terraced hills And timbered ridges, dropping sheer To gorges carved by bubbling rills, And, silent, sought the browsing deer ; My buckskinned footstep on the moss In falling gave no fearful sound, I trailed the mountain-side across, And stole along the hunting-ground.
Where random rocks bestrewed the wood, And velvet moss-flats lay between, A graceful doe alertly stood, Her fawn was dancing on the green; An early jay was screaming near, When suddenly there seemed to fall Upon the tension of my ear A single mellow trumpet-call.
The carbine slipped my careful hand, With cedar-sprays my face I screened, And craning o'er a boulder, scanned
The open space that intervened— A scanty score of steps athwart—
Between me and the speckled fawn, And saw upon that lone resort The idyll of a forest-lawn.
The level sunlight on the dew In red and yellow flashes played, And drooping hemlock branches threw Across the spot a fretted shade : And in the midst, with modest mien, Upon a lichened stone reclined, A willow-grouse surveyed the scene, Nor hidden watching eyes divined.
Her mate, his crested head on high, Deeming his mistress too demure, With pompous swagger strutted by, A turkey-cock in miniature; The open fan, the trailing wings, He flaunted proudly while he made, Obedient to the law of things, His passionate and vain parade. He passed a-tip-toe, puffed with pride, Three times about the dais-seat: His lady, coy, preoccupied, Refused his ardent gaze to meet : Upon the luckless, love-lorn swain Her eye she hardly deigned to cast, Except when once and twice again He blew a liquid trumpet-blast.
A morning zephyr snapped the spell, It bore the scent of danger near: At once upon the silence fell The whistle of a startled deer; The drama faded at a glance, The heroine and her mate had flown With sudden whirring wings : askance I looked and found myself alone.
Empty of hand, yet full at heart, Anon I rose and turned to go ;
I hearu afar the brushwood part
Before the panic-stricken doe And following fawn, and looking back, Half hoped to see the picture still : In vain ; upon the homeward track I wended slowly down the hill.
South Fender Island, British Columbia. L. S. Maas.
Previous page
