MIDNIGHT
HOPES and Fears Start up alarmed , and o'er life 's narrow verge Look down : on what ? -- a fathomless abyss ! -- YOUNG . MIDNIGHT -- and intense frost ! There they were -- houseless and breadless -- the two fugitives , in the heart of that beautiful forest which has rung to the horns of many a royal chase . The soldier , whose youth had been inured to hardships , and to the conquests which our mother-wit wrings from the stepdame Nature , had made a fire by the friction of two pieces of dry wood ; such wood was hard to be found , for the snow whitened the level ground , and lay deep in the hollows ; and when it was discovered , the fuel was slow to burn ; however , the fire blazed red at last . On a little mound , shaded by a semicircle of huge trees , sat the Outlaws of Human Reason .