Teresa and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

We are oak-trees old, that have long endured,
Under sun and moon, in the wind and rain;
Not above ground may our like be found—
So many ages of pride and pain.

We cannot remember what stars waxed wan,
What flowers flushed red, as the dawn rose up,
Or if any bird sang when first we sprang
From the rent ripe egg of the acorn-cup.

But silently over us gloomed and grew
The sense of an unseen canopy;
And hot hushed days in the woodland ways
Were startled at times by a stormy cry;

For centuries since, as in some far dream,
We heard the hounds bay, and the bugle blow;
The hart fell dead on the leaves we shed
Hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

From Spring to Fall, and from year to year,
Lonely we stand, and alone have stood;
Never a tree so lone as we
In the heart of the woodland solitude;

For the air above and the earth beneath,
The grass, the wonderful insects' wings,
Even we ourselves, seem strange to ourselves—
Strange the forms of all living and lifeless things.

The birds and the flowers, that caress our feet,
Or carol about us, and so pass by,
Back to the earth that gave them birth,
Mute, and quenched of their fire and their minstrelsy;

And the vain generations of toiling man,
Whose days are so few and so clamorous—
All, all are changed that round us ranged,
But the same sad moon looking down on us.

Nay, deeper yet, through the dry, dead hours,
Deeper and deeper we search, and see!—
Whose locks are these wave white on the breeze,
'Mid the pomp of an high solemnity?

Lo! the murmured rites of the mystic ones,
With slow procession and chanted prayers;
Young were we then by the hoary men,
The priests of the grove, the star-gazers.

Lo! these upon earth that have left no peer,
With mute pale lip, and with trembling limb—
Even these stood in awe as they heard and saw
The sights and sounds of the forest dim.

Lowly they bowed them when summer burned
O'er the dark of our pillared aisles divine;
Deep was their grief at the falling leaf,
For the rent green roof of their ruined shrine.

And still are we sacred, and round us clings
The mistletoe, mighty to ban or bless;
Its spell is not dead, nor its virtue fled,
Though steeped in a blank forgetfulness.

And still are we kings, though man disdain,
Though winter discrown us in wild revolt,
Though the arrows of the air make flame our hair,
And our zones be scorched with the thunderbolt.

Wherefore go forth, make known to men,
O wind! thou voice of the silent wood,
The hearts of oak, and the words they spoke
From the depth of the old-world solitude:

We smile at your pity, your pride we scorn,
That were, and that are, and are yet to be;
And we bid you revere, and leave us here,
Alone with our immortality.