Part III
The deed is done: the Tree is low
That stood so long and firm;
The Woodman and his axe are gone,
His toil has found its term;
And where he wrought the speckled Thrush
Securely hunts the worm.
The Cony from the sandy bank
Has run a rapid race,
Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern,
To seek the open space;
And on its haunches sits erect
To clean its furry face.
The dappled Fawn is close at hand,
The Hind is browsing near,—
And on the Larch’s lowest bough
The Ousel whistles clear;
But checks the note
Within its throat,
As choked with sudden fear!
With sudden fear her wormy quest
The Thrush abruptly quits—
Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern
The startled Cony flits;
And on the Larch’s lowest bough
No more the Ousel sits.
With sudden fear
The dappled Deer
Effect a swift escape;
But well might bolder creatures start,
And fly, or stand agape,
With rising hair, and curdled blood,
To see so grim a Shape!
The very sky turns pale above;
The earth grows dark beneath;
The human Terror thrills with cold
And draws a shorter breath—
An universal panic owns
The dread approach of DEATH!
With silent pace, as shadows come,
And dark as shadows be,
The grisly Phantom takes his stand
Beside the fallen Tree,
And scans it with his gloomy eyes,
And laughs with horrid glee—
A dreary laugh and desolate,
Where mirth is void and null,
As hollow as its echo sounds
Within the hollow skull—
“Whoever laid this tree along,
His hatchet was not dull!
“The human arm and human tool
Have done their duty well!
But after sound of ringing axe
Must sound the ringing knell;
When Elm or Oak
Have felt the stroke,
My turn it is to fell!
“No passive unregarded tree,
A senseless thing of wood,
Wherein the sluggish sap ascends
To swell the vernal bud—
But conscious, moving, breathing trunks
That throb with living blood!
“No forest Monarch yearly clad
In mantle green or brown;
That unrecorded lives, and falls
By hand of rustic clown—
But Kings who don the purple robe,
And wear the jewell’d crown.
“Ah! little recks the Royal mind,
Within his Banquet Hall,
While tapers shine and Music breathes
And Beauty leads the Ball,—
He little recks the oaken plank
Shall be his palace wall!
“Ah, little dreams the haughty Peer,
The while his Falcon flies—
Or on the blood-bedabbled turf
The antler’d quarry dies—
That in his own ancestral Park
The narrow dwelling lies!
“But haughty Peer and mighty King
One doom shall overwhelm!
The oaken cell
Shall lodge him well
Whose sceptre ruled a realm—
While he, who never knew a home,
Shall find it in the Elm!
“The tatter’d, lean, dejected wretch,
Who begs from door to door,
And dies within the cressy ditch,
Or on the barren moor,
The friendly Elm shall lodge and clothe
That houseless man and poor!
“Yea, this recumbent rugged trunk,
That lies so long and prone,
With many a fallen acorn-cup,
And mast, and furry cone—
This rugged trunk shall hold its share
Of mortal flesh and bone!
“A Miser hoarding heaps of gold,
But pale with ague-fears—
A Wife lamenting love’s decay,
With secret cruel tears,
Distilling bitter, bitter drops
From sweets of former years—
“A Man within whose gloomy mind
Offence had deeply sunk,
Who out of fierce Revenge’s cup
Hath madly, darkly drunk—
Grief, Avarice, and Hate shall sleep
Within this very trunk!
“This massy trunk that lies along,
And many more must fall—
For the very knave
Who digs the grave,
The man who spreads the pall,
And he who tolls the funeral bell,
The Elm shall have them all!
“The tall abounding Elm that grows
In hedgerows up and down;
In field and forest, copse and park,
And in the peopled town,
With colonies of noisy rooks
That nestle on its crown.
“And well th’ abounding Elm may grow
In field and hedge so rife,
In forest, copse, and wooded park,
And ’mid the city’s strife,
For, every hour that passes by
Shall end a human life!”
The Phantom ends: the shade is gone;
The sky is clear and bright;
On turf, and moss, and fallen Tree,
There glows a ruddy light;
And bounding through the golden fern
The Rabbit comes to bite.
The Thrush’s mate beside her sits
And pipes a merry lay;
The Dove is in the evergreen;
And on the Larch’s spray
The Fly-bird flutters up and down,
To catch its tiny prey.
The gentle Hind and dappled Fawn
Are coming up the glade;
Each harmless furr’d and feather’d thing
Is glad, and not afraid—
But on my sadden’d spirit still
The Shadow leaves a shade.
A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed Tree,
Within whose rugged bark
This warm and living frame shall find
Its narrow house and dark.
That mystic Tree which breathed to me
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur’d overhead,
And sometimes underground;
Within that shady Avenue
Where lofty Elms abound.
A poor old king, with sorrow for my crown,
Throned upon straw, and mantled with the wind—
For pity, my own tears have made me blind
That I might never see my children’s frown;
And, may be, madness, like a friend, has thrown
A folded fillet over my dark mind,
So that unkindly speech may sound for kind—
Albeit I know not.—I am childish grown—
And have not gold to purchase wit withal—
I that have once maintain’d most royal state—
A very bankrupt now that may not call
My child, my child—all beggar’d save in tears,
Wherewith I daily weep an old man’s fate,
Foolish—and blind—and overcome with years!
My heart is sick with longing, tho’ I feed
On hope; Time goes with such a heavy pace
That neither brings nor takes from thy embrace,
As if he slept—forgetting his old speed:
For, as in sunshine only we can read
The march of minutes on the dial’s face,
So in the shadows of this lonely place
There is no love, and Time is dead indeed.
But when, dear lady, I am near thy heart,
Thy smile is time, and then so swift it flies,
It seems we only meet to tear apart,
With aching hands and lingering of eyes.
Alas, alas! that we must learn hours’ flight
By the same light of love that makes them bright!