"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 jewelled 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 antlered 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 tattered, 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, ragged trunk,
That lies so long and prone,
With many a fallen acorn-cup,

And mast and firry 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 darkly 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 hedge-rows 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 the 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 evergreens;
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 furred and feathered thing

Is glad, and not afraid
But on my saddened 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 murmured overhead,
And sometimes underground;

Within that shady avenue

Where lofty elms abound.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.

"TWAS in the prime of summer time,
An evening calm and cool,
And four and twenty happy boys

Came bounding out of school:

There were some that ran, and some that leapt Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds

And souls untouched by sin;

To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,
And shouted as they ran,
Turning to mirth all things of earth,
As only boyhood can;

But the Usher sat remote from all,
A melancholy man!

His hat was off, his vest apart,

To catch heaven's blesséd breeze; For a burning thought was in his brow, And his bosom ill at ease:

So he leaned his head on his hands, and read The book between his knees!

Leaf after leaf he turned it o'er,

Nor ever glanced aside,

For the peace of his soul he read that book
In the golden eventide :
Much study had made him very lean,
And pale, and leaden-eyed.

At last he shut the ponderous tome;
With a fast and fervent grasp
He strained the dusky covers close,
And fixed the brazen hasp:
"O, God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!"

Then leaping on his feet upright,

Some moody turns he took