HOW long, oh, my faithful companion and guide! <br />Thou hast wafted o'er deserts my car! <br />How oft, oh, my rein-deer! thy speed has been tried, <br />O'er mountains unknown and afar! <br /> <br />But thy youth is departed, thy fire is no more, <br />And thy limbs all their vigor have lost; <br />For age steals upon thee, relentless and hoar, <br />And colder than winter his frost! <br /> <br />When friendship, or pleasure, invited away, <br />Thou hast borne me o'er valleys and plains; <br />Untir'd with the dangers, the toils of the day, <br />While the road was beguil'd by my strains! <br /> <br />When love gave the word, o'er the landscape of snow, <br />We flew like the wings of the wind! <br />In this ice-cover'd region, his sun-beam may glow, <br />To melt and to soften the mind! <br /> <br />But thy youth is departed, thy spirit and grace, <br />And thy limbs all their vigor have lost; <br />For age steals upon thee with lingering pace, <br />And colder than winter his frost. <br /> <br />How oft has the summer, in mantle of green, <br />Array'd the wild Tenglio's side; <br />Since thou, oh, my rein-deer! my servant hast been, <br />My faithful companion and guide! <br /> <br />When we journey'd together, and both in our prime, <br />How fleet were thy steps o'er the waste; <br />But fleeter than thee, oh, my rein-deer! is time, <br />More swift, more unsparing in haste! <br /> <br />For thy youth is departed, thy spirit is fled, <br />And thy limbs all their vigor have lost; <br />Now age steals upon thee, unwelcome and dread, <br />And colder than winter his frost!<br /><br />Felicia Dorothea Hemans<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-laplander-to-his-rein-deer/
