A Meeting in the Forest

LEAVING my tent once as the dawn grew fair,Behold! we stood at gaze, a deer and I,Regarding one another furtively,—Too much surprised, too curious for a careBeyond the miracle that each was there!An instant, then—as arrow swift doth fly,Sudden as light that darts across the sky—Gone was he: and the wood seemed reft and bare.

What startled so the gentle, soft-eyed thing?'T was but my love his idle fear outran—Love that would fain have fed him shoots of Spring,Balsam and cedar from the groves of Pan!Why fled he? Ah, a voice admonishingWhispered the free, wild creature: "It is Man!"