Page:May-day and other pieces, Emerson, 1867.djvu/62

50 Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon;

Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;

Or listening to the laughter of the loon;

Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,

Beholding the procession of the pines;

Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,

In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter

Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds

Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.

Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods

Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck

Who stands astonished at the meteor light,

Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?

Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark,

Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;

Sometimes our wits at sally and retort,

With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;

Or parties scaled the near acclivities