THE BOY-HUNTER. 89 



mon forms about me, I grew weary: they did not fill my 

 lonsino-s for — I knew not what ! — ^but when the wild-bird, 

 gleaming past, told me of the beautiful, the vivid, and the 

 free, I no longer tarried with dull sense ! I wore no wings, 

 but yet I followed it, beating the air with visionary plumes, 

 to fling the sunshine off; mine were no mellow pipes, but yet 

 I felt a carol in the blossoming tree, and sung by shady 

 streamlets a low, rippling trill — wild among flowers and vines, 

 darting through shadows in tameless shine, I went, with the 

 swift thing, in riot through our joy ! Ah, it filled me with 

 the freshness of untamable delight, and set my spirit free on 

 its gem-dusted wings ! 



As for that young squirrel, out from deep woods where 

 some old oak had nursed it, rocking the soft sprite in his 

 rigid arms, it won my very soul, with its dark glistening eyes 

 and feathery brush ! I felt the frosty patriarch of shades em- 

 brace it gently and warm within his knotted bosom, when the 

 battle- wind of winter had come forth ; and saw its airy bound- 

 ings lend a frolic grace to his grey poll, when gay spring 

 breezes wooed him. Enchanted now, and eager of sweet 

 mysteries, I entered where its leafy bed was rolled, and where 

 the garnered stores lay fragrant in dim chambers of that 

 oaken heart. 



And then I smiled in dreaming, for I saw it here with 

 strange surroundings ! It had troops of little friends, the 

 leaf-winged elves, that came into its chambers when the moon 

 went down, and were all a-shiver with the cold, raw morning ; 

 and with puffy cheeks, straining at the load, they brought it 

 round, fat nuts, an armful each, and threw them on the little 

 heaps within its garner ; — some, rare acorns, too, and some, 

 triangled beech-nuts, or purple wild grape, or a bm-sting bud 

 — this was for love and — breakfast ! Then they would creep 

 in bed with folded wings, and I could plainly see them pulling 

 its soft brush aside to get beneath the cover, and it would stir 

 a bit as if in vision it saw the dainties they had brought, and 



