Let me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train,Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face;Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass—to toil, to strife, to rest; To halls in which the feast is spread;To chambers where the funeral guest In silence sits beside the dead.
And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some, who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the doorWhere one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye!Goest thou to build an early name, Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who is now fluttering in thy snare?Thy golden fortunes, tower they now, Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again?Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold dark hours, how slow the light,And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, They pass, and heed each other not.There is who heeds, who holds them all, In his large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend,Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.
THE WHITE-FOOTED DEER.°
It was a hundred years ago, When, by the woodland ways,The traveller saw the wild deer drink, Or crop the birchen sprays.
Beneath a hill, whose rocky side O'erbrowed a grassy mead,And fenced a cottage from the wind, A deer was wont to feed.
She only came when on the cliffs The evening moonlight lay,And no man knew the secret haunts In which she walked by day.
White were her feet, her forehead showed A spot of silvery white,That seemed to glimmer like a star In autumn's hazy night.
And here, when sang the whippoorwill, She cropped the sprouting leaves,And here her rustling steps were heard On still October eves.
But when the broad midsummer moon Rose o'er that grassy lawn,Beside the silver-footed deer There grazed a spotted fawn.
The cottage dame forbade her son To aim the rifle here;"It were a sin," she said, "to harm Or fright that friendly deer.
"This spot has been my pleasant home Ten peaceful years and more;And ever, when the moonlight shines, She feeds before our door.
"The red men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago;They never raise the war-whoop here, And never twang the bow.
"I love to watch her as she feeds, And think that all is wellWhile such a gentle creature haunts The place in which we dwell."
The youth obeyed, and sought for game In forests far away,Where, deep in silence and in moss, The ancient woodland lay.
But once, in autumn's golden time, He ranged the wild in vain,Nor roused the pheasant nor the deer, And wandered home again.
The crescent moon and crimson eve Shone with a mingling light;The deer, upon the grassy mead, Was feeding full in sight.
He raised the rifle to his eye, And from the cliffs aroundA sudden echo, shrill and sharp, Gave back its deadly sound.
Away into the neighbouring wood The startled creature flew,And crimson drops at morning lay Amid the glimmering dew.
Next evening shone the waxing moon As sweetly as before;The deer upon the grassy mead Was seen again no more.
But ere that crescent moon was old, By night the red men came,And burnt the cottage to the ground, And slew the youth and dame.
Now woods have overgrown the mead, And hid the cliffs from sight;There shrieks the hovering hawk at noon, And prowls the fox at night.