THE BEECH TREE.
[Written after a drive from Berry Pomeroy to Torquay, in Autumn.]
Give me of all our English trees the beeches,
Upright, smooth stemmed, and shapely in their spread
Of leafy boughs, in summer raimented
In glossy green and, when November preaches
His warning to the failing year in speeches
Of gust and frost, so gloriously red
That all the hollows where the leaves lie dead,
Rival the glow of crimson on the peaches
In hothouse reared. Not for fair stem and leaves
We praise thee only! have we not, when boys,
Declared thy nuts superior to the joys
Of walnuts fenced securely? Have not eves
Of chilly Christmases mid London fogs
Been transformated by thy blazing logs?
