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Hounds are in their couples yelling,

Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling, Merrily, merrily mingle they, "Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,

The mist has left the mountain gray,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming,
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."

Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size;
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed;
You shall see him brought to bay;
Waken, lords and ladies gay.

Lauder, louder chant the lay,

Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Tell them, youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we;

Time, stern huntsman, who can balk,
Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk?
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

RISE!

THE HUNTER'S SONG.

Sleep no more! "T is a noble morn.
The dews hang thick on the fringèd thorn,

And the frost shrinks back like a beaten hound,
Under the steaming, steaming ground.
Behold, where the billowy clouds flow by,
And leave us alone in the clear gray sky!
Our horses are ready and steady.-So, ho!
I'm gone, like a dart from the Tartar's bow.
Hark, hark!—Who calleth the maiden Morn
From her sleep in the woods and the stubble
corn?

The horn, the horn!

The merry, sweet ring of the hunter's horn.

Now, through the copse where the fox is found,
And over the stream at a mighty bound,
And over the high lands and over the low,
O'er furrows, o'er meadows, the hunters go!
Away! as a hawk flies full at his prey,
So flieth the hunter, away, away!

From the burst at the cover till set of sun,
When the red fox dies, and-the day is done.
Hark, hark!-What sound on the wind is borne?
'Tis the conquering voice of the hunter's horn:
The horn, the horn!

The merry, bold voice of the hunter's horn.

Sound! Sound the horn! To the hunter good What's the gully deep or the roaring flood?

Right over he bounds, as the wild stag bounds,
At the heels of his swift, sure, silent hounds.
Oh, what delight can a mortal lack,
When he once is firm on his horse's back,
With his stirrups short, and his snaffle strong,
And the blast of the horn for his morning song?
Hark, hark!-Now home! and dream till morn
Of the bold, sweet sound of the hunter's horn!
The horn, the horn!

Oh, the sound of all sounds is the hunter's horn!

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (Barry Cornwall).

66

THE HUNTED SQUIRREL.

FROM BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS," BK. I. SONG 5.

THEN as a nimble squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food,

Sits pertly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys,
To share with him, come with so great a noise
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leap to a neighbor oak,
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water
plashes

The boys run dabbling thorough thick and thin,
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin,
This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe:
This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being last:

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