Mountain and vale, and mead, and pasture wild, Have quickly changed their robes of deepest green; The summer flowers are withered, save a few Pale tremblers by the sunny cottage door, That linger, relics of the roseate band, Till icy winter, wandering from the pole, Sings their sad death-song on the snowy hills. Though not a cloud appears to fleck the sky, The sun at evening shines with tempered heat, The solitary flicker bores the tree— The carpenter of birds; and in the path, The deadly rattlesnake, with flattened head, And tongue of crimson darting from his mouth, Watches the idle bird that marks his form, Till the charmed victim, with affrighted cries, Drops on his fangs, the vile seducer’s prey. The hunter takes his way amid the woods, Or by the ocean side, when far away The wave that roll’d upon the beach has gone, To lave a thousand isles of beauty ere It breaks again in thunder on that shore. The well-trained setter through the covert seeks The bird the sportsman’s fancy prizes o’er The feathered songsters of the woodland wild; The covey starts, and soon the murd’rous aim Brings down the plover, or the woodcock dun, Or mottled pheasant, that puts trust in man, And finds, as all have found, the trust abused. On the brown stump the sprightly squirrel sits, Filling his striped pouch with ripened grain, While in the thicket near the rabbit glides, And as his foot falls on the withered leaves, A rustling sound in the dim woods is heard, Rousing the chewitt and the piping jay, And startling from the dead pines naked top, With hoarsest cry, the reconnoitering crow.