 | Poems by Edward C. Pinkney |  |
71
THE OLD TREE.
(From the Note-Book of a Traveller.)
I.
And is it gone, that venerable tree,The old spectator of my infancy!—
It used to stand upon this very spot,
And now almost its absence is forgot.
I knew its mighty strength had known decay,
Its heart, like every old one, shrunk away,
But dreamt not that its frame would fall, ere mine
At all partook my weary soul's decline.
II.
The great reformist, that each day removesThe old, yet never on the old improves,
The dotard, Time, that like a child destroys,
As sport or spleen may prompt, his ancient toys,
And shapes their ruins into something new—
Has planted other playthings where it grew.
72
Which once among its leaves delayed perforce;
The harmless Hamadryad, that, of yore,
Inhabited its bole, subsists no more;
Its roots have long since felt the ruthless plow—
There is no vestige of its glories now!
But in my mind, which doth not soon forget,
That venerable tree is growing yet;
Nourished, like those wild plants that feed on air,
By thoughts of years unconversant with care,
And visions such as pass ere man grows wholly
A fiendish thing, or mischief adds to folly.
I still behold it with my fancy's eye,
A vernant record of the days gone by:
I see not the sweet form and face more plain,
Whose memory was a weight upon my brain.
—Dear to my song, and dearer to my soul,
Who knew but half my heart, yet had the whole
Sun of my life, whose presence and whose flight
Its brief day caused, and never ending night!
Must this delightless verse, which is indeed
The mere wild product of a worthless weed,
(But which, like sun-flowers, turns a loving face
Towards the lost light, and scorns its birth and place,)
End with such cold allusion unto you,
To whom, in youth, my very dreams were true?
It must; I have no more of that soft kind,
My age is not the same, nor is my mind.
| Poems by Edward C. Pinkney | |