Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

Softly it murmur'd “Dost thou know me not,
My brother? I, the Forest, I am he,
The one friend left thee in earth's one safe spot,
Whose love, where'er thou wanderest, waits for thee;

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“Outlasting all things for the loss of which
That love is consolation: gold misspent,
Youth wasted, hope impoverisht, to make rich
The thankless avarice of discontent.

“Love faithful, love unchangeable, and fast
As is the root whereby 'tis fixt and fed!
Vainly the world, wherein no root thou hast,
Thou wanderest seeking what, when found, is fled.

“And think'st thou I am solitary? Thou
It is who art a wandering solitude.
For from thy life away thy life doth flow,
And, self-pursuing, thou art self-pursued.

“‘Not here,’ thou sigh'st, ‘I live, for life is there.’
Yet, hadst thou waited, life had come to thee,
Who, seeking life, hast miss'd it everywhere;
Whilst here, where rest is mine, life sends to me

“Momently messengers, that know the way
To find me, from the world's four corners come.
The winds, and clouds, and stars of heaven, are they,
And the sweet birds that to my heart fly home.

“Count me the emmets that go up and down
My creviced bark. Know'st thou what myriads move
In any blade of grass o'er which is thrown
The shadow of my power and of my love?

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“What lurks and crouches under any stone
That nestles at my feet? What builds and breeds
In my least berry? Or what deeds are done
Even by my least distinguishable seeds?

“The Tree stands steadfast, contemplating all.
Tree-trunk from tree-trunk earth holds safe and single:
But, weaving one etherial coronal,
Tree-top, in heaven, doth with tree-top mingle.

“What buoyant bridges, which the squirrel knows,
How airy light, how delicately wrought,
The elm-tree to his beechen brethren throws,
Where branch with branch is mixt, as thought with thought!

“All this the Tree hath of the root he hath.
For whoso hath no root, no life hath he.
No path leads to him. And by every path
He from himself must needs a wanderer be.”