(Since which I number threescore winters past,)
A shatter'd vet'ran, hollow-trunk'd perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
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
Imagin'd sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act

Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Lov'd not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.

Thou wast a bauble once-a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
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 mellow'd the soil
Design'd thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepar'd
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,

Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.

So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reas'ners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employ'd 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,
Did burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins,

Now stars; two lobes, protruding, pair'd exact;
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth
Fost'ring propitious, thou becam'st a twig.

Who liv'd, when thou wast such? As in Dodona once thy kindred trees Oracular, I would not curious ask

O could'st thou speak,

The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth,
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.

By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, The clock of history, facts and events Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts Recovering, and misstated setting right,

Desp'rate attempt, till trees shall speak again!

Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods;
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 num'rous flocks
That graz'd it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-shelter'd from the storm.

No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outliv'd
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 push'd

Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass;

Then twig; then sapling; and, as cent'ry roll'd
Slow after century, a giant-bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root
Upheav'd above the soil, and sides emboss'd
With prominent wens globose-till at the last
The rottenness, which Time is charged t' inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world Witness'd of mutability, in all

That we account most durable below!

Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them.

Skies uncertain now the heat

Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds—
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,

Fine passing thought e'en in her coarsest works,
Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force that agitates, not unimpair'd;
But, worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.

Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
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 thy root-and time has been
When tempests could not. At thy firmest age
Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents,

That might have ribb'd the sides and plank'd the deck
Of some flagg'd admiral; and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four-quarter'd winds, robust and bold,
Warp'd into tough knee-timber, many a load!
But the axe spar'd thee. In those thriftier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands to supply
The bottomless demands of contest, wag'd

For senatorial honours. 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, unobserv'd,
Achiev'd a labour which had far and wide,
By man perform'd, made all the forest ring.

Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self
Possessing nought but the scoop'd rind, that seems
A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root,
Thou temptest none, but rather much forbidd'st
The feller's toil, which thou could'st ill requite.
Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock,
A quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs,
Which, crook'd 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 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
A splinter'd stump, bleach'd to a snowy white;
And some, memorial none where once they grew.
But life still lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even where death predominates. The Spring
Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighb'ring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received
Half a millennium since the date of thine.