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| SURVIVOR sole, and hardly such, of all | |
| That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth, | |
| (Since which I number threescore winters past,) | |
| A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps, | |
| As now, and with excoriate forks deform, | 5 |
| Relics of ages! Could a mind, imbued | |
| With truth from Heaven, created thing adore, | |
| I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee. | |
| |
| It seems idolatry with some excuse, | |
| When our forefather Druids in their oaks | 10 |
| Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet | |
| Unpurified by an authentic act | |
| Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine, | |
| Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom | |
| Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste | 15 |
| Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled. | |
| |
| Thou wast a bawble once; a cup and ball, | |
| Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay | |
| Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined | |
| The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down | 20 |
| Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs | |
| And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp. | |
| But Fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains | |
| Beneath thy parent tree mellowed the soil | |
| Designed thy cradle; and a skipping deer, | 25 |
| With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared | |
| The soft receptacle, in which, secure, | |
| Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through. | |
| |
| So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can, | |
| Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search | 30 |
| Of argument, employed too oft amiss, | |
| Sifts half the pleasures of short life away! | |
| |
| Thou fell’st mature; and in the loamy clod | |
| Swelling with vegetative force instinct | |
| Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, | 35 |
| Now stars; two lobes, protruding, paired exact; | |
| A leaf succeeded, and another leaf, | |
| And, all the elements thy puny growth | |
| Fostering propitious, thou becam’st a twig. | |
| |
| Who lived, when thou wast such? O, couldst thou speak, | 40 |
| As in Dodona once thy kindred trees | |
| Oracular, I would not curious ask | |
| The future, best unknown, but at thy month | |
| Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past. | |
| |
| By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, | 45 |
| The clock of history, facts and events | |
| Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts | |
| Recovering, and misstated setting right,— | |
| Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again! | |
| |
| Time made thee what thou wast, king of the wood; | 50 |
| And Time hath made thee what thou art, a cave | |
| For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs | |
| O’erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks | |
| That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope | |
| Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm. | 55 |
| No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived | |
| Thy popularity, and art become | |
| (Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing | |
| Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth. | |
| |
| While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed | 60 |
| Of treeship,—first a seedling, hid in grass; | |
| Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled | |
| Slow after century, a giant bulk | |
| Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root | |
| Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed | 65 |
| With prominent wens globose,—till at the last | |
| The rottenness which time is charged to inflict | |
| On other mighty ones found also thee. * * * * * | |
| Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still | |
| The great and little of thy lot, thy growth | 70 |
| From almost nullity into a state | |
| Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, | |
| Slow, into such magnificent decay. | |
| Time was, when, settling on thy leaf, a fly | |
| Could shake thee to the root,—and time has been | 75 |
| When tempests could not. At thy firmest age | |
| Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents, | |
| That might have ribbed the sides and planked the deck | |
| Of some flagged admiral; and tortuous arms, | |
| The shipwright’s darling treasure, didst present | 80 |
| To the four-quartered winds, robust and bold, | |
| Warped into tough knee-timber, many a load! | |
| But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days | |
| Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply | |
| The bottomless demands of contest, waged | 85 |
| For senatorial honors. Thus to Time | |
| The task was left to whittle thee away | |
| With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge, | |
| Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more, | |
| Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserved, | 90 |
| Achieved a labor which had far and wide, | |
| By man performed, made all the forest ring. | |
| |
| Embowelled now, and of thy ancient self | |
| Possessing naught but the scooped rind, that seems | |
| An huge throat, calling to the clouds for drink, | 95 |
| Which it would give in rivulets to thy root, | |
| Thou temptest none, but rather much forbidd’st | |
| The feller’s toil, which thou couldst ill requite. | |
| Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock, | |
| A quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs, | 100 |
| Which, crooked into a thousand whimsies, clasp | |
| The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect. | |
| |
| So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet | |
| Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid, | |
| Though all the superstructure, by the tooth | 105 |
| Pulverized of venality, a shell | |
| Stands now, and semblance only of itself! | |
| |
| Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off | |
| Long since, and rovers of the forest wild, | |
| With bow and shaft, have burnt them. Some have left | 110 |
| A splintered stump, bleached to a snowy white; | |
| And some, memorial none where once they grew. | |
| Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth | |
| Proof not contemptible of what she can, | |
| Even where death predominates. The spring | 115 |
| Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force, | |
| Than yonder upstarts of the neighboring wood, | |
| So much thy juniors, who their birth received | |
| Half a millennium since the date of thine. | |
| |
| But since, although well qualified by age | 120 |
| To teach, no spirit dwells in thee, nor voice | |
| May be expected from thee, seated here | |
| On thy distorted root, with hearers none, | |
| Or prompter, save the scene, I will perform, | |
| Myself the oracle, and will discourse | 125 |
| In my own ear such matter as I may. | |
| |
| One man alone, the father of us all, | |
| Drew not his life from woman; never gazed, | |
| With mute unconsciousness of what he saw, | |
| On all around him; learned not by degrees, | 130 |
| Nor owed articulation to his ear; | |
| But, moulded by his Maker into man | |
| At once, upstood intelligent, surveyed | |
| All creatures, with precision understood | |
| Their purport, uses, properties, assigned | 135 |
| To each his name significant, and, filled | |
| With love and wisdom, rendered back to Heaven | |
| In praise harmonious the first air he drew. | |
| He was excused the penalties of dull | |
| Minority. No tutor charged his hand | 140 |
| With the thought-tracing quill, or tasked his mind | |
| With problems. History, not wanted yet, | |
| Leaned on her elbow, watching Time, whose course, | |
| Eventful, should supply her with a theme. | |
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