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A true story of a fawn.
Slanting over the wooded vale;
And the weary hunter stood
Looking down on his cot below,
Watching his children there at play,
Watching the swing on the chestnut bough
Flit to and fro through the twilight gray,
Till the dove's nest rocked on its quivering spray.

Faint and far through the forest wide
Came a hunter's voice, and a hound's deep cry;
Silence, that slept in the rocky dell,
Scarcely waked as her sentinel
Challenged the sound from the mountain side.
Over the valleys the echo died,
And a doe sprang lightly by
And cleared the path, and panting stood
With her trembling fawn by the leaping flood.

She spanned the torrent at a bound,
And swiftly onward, winged by fear,
Fled as the cry of the deep-mouthed hound
Fell louder on her ear;