The arrow! the arrow is fast in his side!
And still through the forest they follow
The poor stricken deer, that has nowhere to hide,
And dared not to pause where the cool waters glide,
When, leaping the brook, he would almost have died,
One draught from its ripple to swallow.
That deep-planted arrow! O how can he bear
The anguish of feeling it quiver,
When shook by the branches, the wave, or the air,
As forward he bounds, but without heeding where,
From thicket to crag, with the force of despair,
To plunge in the cold, sweeping river?
They hunted him hard, till the sun in the west
Had sunk, while their aim he evaded.
At evening, he sought a calm refuge of rest,
And dropped from pursuit, by his terrors oppressed,
Beneath the close branches, in verdure full-dressed,
By night and the covert o'ershaded.
But ah, the poor deer! they had doomed him to die!
For near the green turf where he laid him,
They lighted the torch, and they brandished it high;
It glared through the boughs on his tender black eye,
That fatally shone for the death-shaft to fly;
His beauty, his beaming betrayed him:
He cannot by flying now loosen the dart,
The end of his tortures to quicken,
By letting the life in one blood-gush depart.
He seeks a retreat, like the warm, wounded heart,
When, lone, slow, and silent, the victim of art,
It dies, as a deer that is stricken.