"And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
TWAS in a shady avenue,
Where lofty elms abound-
And from a tree
There came to me
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmured overhead,
And sometimes underground.
Amongst the leaves it seemed to sigh,
Amid the boughs to moan;
It muttered in the stem, and then
The roots took up the tone;
As if beneath the dewy grass
The dead began to groan.
No breeze there was to stir the leaves;
No bolts that tempests launch,
To rend the trunk or rugged bark;
No gale to bend the branch;
No quake of earth to heave the roots,
That stood so stiff and stanch.
No bird was preening up aloft,
To rustle with its wing;
No squirrel, in its sport or fear,
From bough to bough to spring;
The solid bole
Had ne'er a hole
To hide a living thing!
No scooping hollow cell to lodge
A furtive beast or fowl,
The martin, bat,
Or forest cat
That nightly loves to prowl,
Nor ivy nook so apt to shroud
The moping, snoring owl.
But still the sound was in my ear,
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmured overhead,
And sometimes underground
'T was in a shady avenue
Where lofty elms abound.
O, hath the Dryad still a tongue
In this ungenial clime?
Have sylvan spirits still a voice
As in the classic prime-
To make the forest voluble,
As in the olden time?
The olden time is dead and gone;
Its years have filled their sum
And even in Greece her native Greece
The sylvan nymph is dumb
From ash, and beech, and aged oak,
No classic whispers come.
From poplar, pine, and drooping birch,
And fragrant linden trees;
No living sound
E'er hovers round,
Unless the vagrant breeze,
The music of the merry bird,
Or hum of busy bees.
But busy bees forsake the elm
That bears no bloom aloft -
The finch was in the hawthorn-bush,
The blackbird in the croft;
And among the firs the brooding dove
That else might murmur soft.
Yet still I heard that solemn sound,
And sad it was to boot,
From every overhanging bough,
And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,
And from the twisted root.
From those, a dreary sigh;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,
And wild winds sweeping by-
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud
Was steadfast in the sky.
No sign or touch of stirring air
Could either sense observe
The zephyr had not breath enough
The thistle-down to swerve,
Or force the filmy gossamers
To take another curve.
In still and silent slumber hushed
All Nature seemed to be:
From heaven above, or earth beneath,
No whisper came to me
Except the solemn sound and sad
From that MYSTERIOUS TREE!
A hollow, hollow, hollow sound,
As is that dreamy roar
When distant billows boil and bound
Along a shingly shore
But the ocean brim was far aloof,
A hundred miles or more.
No murmur of the gusty sea,
No tumult of the beach,
However they may foam and fret,
The bounded sense could reach
Methought the trees in mystic tongue
Were talking each to each! -
Mayhap, rehearsing ancient tales
Of greenwood love or guilt,
Of whispered vows
Beneath their boughs;
Or blood obscurely spilt;
Or of that near-hand mansion-house
A royal Tudor built.
Perchance, of booty won or shared
Beneath the starry cope -
Or where the suicidal wretch
Hung up the fatal rope;
Or Beauty kept an evil tryste,
Ensnared by Love and Hope.
Of graves, perchance, untimely scooped
At midnight dark and dank-
And what is underneath the sod
Whereon the grass is rank
Of old intrigues,
And privy leagues,
Tradition leaves in blank.
Of traitor lips that muttered plots-
Of kin who fought and fell-
God knows the undiscovered schemes,
The arts and acts of hell,
Performed long generations since,
If trees had tongues to tell!
With wary eyes, and ears alert,
As one who walks afraid,
I wandered down the dappled path
Of mingled light and shade-
How sweetly gleamed that arch of blue
Beyond the green arcade!
How cheerly shone the glimpse of heaven
Beyond that verdant aisle !
All overarched with lofty elms,
That quenched the light, the while,
As dim and chill
As serves to fill
Some old cathedral pile!
And many a gnarléd trunk was there,
That ages long had stood,
Till Time had wrought them into shapes
Like Pan's fantastic brood;
Or still more foul and hideous forms
That pagans carve in wood'
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