Part II
The Scene is changed! No green Arcade,
No Trees all ranged a-row—
But scatter’d like a beaten host,
Dispersing to and fro;
With here and there a sylvan corse,
That fell before the foe.
The Foe that down in yonder dell
Pursues his daily toil;
As witness many a prostrate trunk,
Bereft of leafy spoil,
Hard by its wooden stump, whereon
The adder loves to coil.
Alone he works—his ringing blows
Have banish’d bird and beast;
The Hind and Fawn have canter’d off
A hundred yards at least;
And on the maple’s lofty top
The linnet’s song has ceased.
No eye his labor overlooks,
Or when he takes his rest,
Except the timid thrush that peeps
Above her secret nest,
Forbid by love to leave the young
Beneath her speckled breast.
The Woodman’s heart is in his work,
His axe is sharp and good:
With sturdy arm and steady aim
He smites the gaping wood;
From distant rocks
His lusty knocks
Re-echo many a rood.
His axe is keen, his arm is strong;
The muscles serve him well;
His years have reach’d an extra span,
The number none can tell;
But still his lifelong task has been
The Timber Tree to fell.
Through Summer’s parching sultriness,
And Winter’s freezing cold,
From sapling youth
To virile growth.
And Age’s rigid mould,
His energetic axe hath rung
Within that Forest old.
Aloft, upon his poising steel
The vivid sunbeams glance—
About his head and round his feet
The forest shadows dance;
And bounding from his russet coat
The acorn drops askance.
His face is like a Druid’s face,
With wrinkles furrow’d deep,
And tann’d by scorching suns as brown
As corn that’s ripe to reap;
But the hair on brow, and cheek, and chin,
Is white as wool of sheep.
His frame is like a giant’s frame;
His legs are long and stark;
His arms like limbs of knotted yew;
His hands like rugged bark;
So he felleth still
With right good will,
As if to build an Ark!
Oh! well within His fatal path
The fearful Tree might quake
Through every fibre, twig, and leaf,
With aspen tremor shake;
Through trunk and root,
And branch and shoot,
A low complaining make!
Oh! well to Him the Tree might breathe
A sad and solemn sound,
A sigh that murmur’d overhead,
And groans from underground;
As in that shady Avenue
Where lofty Elms abound!
But calm and mute the Maple stands,
The Plane, the Ash, the Fir,
The Elm, the Beech, the drooping Birch,
Without the least demur;
And e’en the Aspen’s hoary leaf
Makes no unusual stir.
The Pines—those old gigantic Pines,
That writhe—recalling soon
The famous Human Group that writhes
With Snakes in wild festoon—
In ramous wrestlings interlaced
A Forest Laocoon—
Like Titans of primeval girth
By tortures overcome,
Their brown enormous limbs they twine,
Bedew’d with tears of gum—
Fierce agonies that ought to yell,
But, like the marble, dumb.
Nay, yonder blasted Elm that stands
So like a man of sin,
Who, frantic, flings his arms abroad
To feel the Worm within—
For all that gesture, so intense,
It makes no sort of din!
An universal silence reigns
In rugged bark or peel,
Except that very trunk which rings
Beneath the biting steel—
Meanwhile the Woodman plies his axe
With unrelenting zeal!
No rustic song is on his tongue,
No whistle on his lips;
But with a quiet thoughtfulness
His trusty tool he grips,
And, stroke on stroke, keeps hacking out
The bright and flying chips.
Stroke after stroke, with frequent dint
He spreads the fatal gash;
Till, lo! the remnant fibres rend,
With harsh and sudden crash,
And on the dull resounding turf
The jarring branches lash!
Oh! now the Forest Trees may sigh,
The Ash, the Poplar tall,
The Elm, the Beech, the drooping Birch,
The Aspens—one and all,
With solemn groan
And hollow moan
Lament a comrade’s fall!
A goodly Elm, of noble girth,
That, thrice the human span—
While on their variegated course
The constant Seasons ran—
Through gale, and hail, and fiery bolt,
Had stood erect as Man.
But now, like mortal Man himself,
Struck down by hand of God,
Or heathen Idol tumbled prone
Beneath th’ Eternal’s nod,
In all its giant bulk and length
It lies along the sod!
Ay, now the Forest Trees may grieve
And make a common moan
Around that patriarchal trunk
So newly overthrown;
And with a murmur recognize
A doom to be their own!
The Echo sleeps: the idle axe,
A disregarded tool,
Lies crushing with its passive weight
The toad’s reputed stool—
The Woodman wipes his dewy brow
Within the shadows cool.
No Zephyr stirs: the ear may catch
The smallest insect-hum;
But on the disappointed sense
No mystic whispers come;
No tone of sylvan sympathy,
The Forest Trees are dumb.
No leafy noise, nor inward voice,
No sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmurs overhead,
And sometimes underground;
As in that shady Avenue,
Where lofty Elms abound!