THE HUNTER:

A POEM.

IN TEN CANTOS.

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THE HUNTER:

A POEM'.

CANTO I.

ONCE on a time, when Liberty was seen
To sport and revel on the northern plain,
Immortal fair! and was supremely kind
On Scotia's hills to snuff the northern wind;
There lived a youth, and DONALD was his name.
To chace the flying stag his highest aim;

A gun, a plaid, a dog, his humble store;

In these thrice happy, as he wants no more.

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This poem, which has no name in the MS., I have entitled the HUNTER, to distinguish it from the HIGHLANDER, of which, perhaps, it is the first rough and imperfect draught. Though rude, and in many passages quite ludicrous, it is curious, as the first epic production of the father of Ossian; marked with his national and political prejudices, and with the wild and vivid imagery of his poetical prose. It is particularly observable, that his early genius for heroic poesy led him, even in the preceding poem upon Death, to the description of battles and single combats, and to a careful selection of the choicest similes, which appear as conspicuous, in the midst of an insipid narrative, as those projecting passages in an extemporary speech, of which a few well-turned periods had been previously composed.

VOL. II.

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The flesh of deer his food; the heath his bed;
He slept contented in his tartan plaid.

Sprightly as morn he rose with dawning light,

And strode o'er hills until the approach of night;

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Then bounding homeward, joyful burden bears

Of heath-hens, woodcocks, or of fearful deers.

Then Bessy gets upon the homely board

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What Donald's gun and oaten field afford.

Blest in the chace, blest in his barren soil,

And more than happy in his temperate toil,

Our Donald lived; but, oh! how soon the light
Of happiness is sunk in blackest night!

It chanced the Fairie's king a daughter had,
A beauteous, blooming, and a sportive maid.
She took delight, upon the flowery lawn
To frisk, transported, round a female fawn.
The hunter aims the tube: the powder flies;

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The fawn falls, roars, and shakes her limbs, and dies.

The blooming Flavia saw her play-thing die;

Sighs rend her breast, and tears bedew her eye,
Wrath, sorrow, rage, her tender fabric rock,
And thus, indignant, she the silence broke:

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"Ah me! what frailties fairies' nature owe,
The sport of every blast that likes to blow:
One blast of Boreas, whistling o'er the hill,
Shall drive the stoutest headlong half a mile;
The rain, the rattling hail, deep wounds impress,
Which two warm summers scarcely can redress.
Not only these, but man, our greatest foe,
Vile, rough-spun creature, minister of woe!
Scarce Flavia loves a deer upon the vale,
E'er torn by dogs, or by the winged ball,
Her darling falls. Ah me! my little fawn,
How oft with thee I sported on the lawn,

But shall no more: but what thy Flavia grieves,
Her abject strength no hopes of vengeance gives.

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