 | The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey |  |
Old friend! old stone! old way-mark! art thou gone?
I could have better spared a better thing
Than sight of thy familiar shapeless form,
Defaced and weather-stained. But thus it is
Where'er I turn me, wheresoe'er I look,
Change, change, change, change, is everywhere at work
In all mine ancient haunts. Grammercie, though!
Reform—improvement, is the proper word.
We live, God wot! in an improving age,
And our old world, if it last long enough,
Will reach perfection. Lo! conceptions vast
Germ not alone in patriot statesman's mind
Or great philanthropist's. Our public men—
Ours in this rural district nook o' the world,
“Armed with a little brief authority,”
Wield it like Jove's own thunder, and affect
The Olympic nod. Would they had nodded off
Their sapient heads, ere, in an evil hour,
Beautiful elms! your spreading branches fell,
Because, forsooth, across the King's highway,
Conspiring with the freeborn, “chartered” air,
Your verdant branches treasonably waved,
And swung perchance the pendant dewdrops off
On roof of royal mail, or in the eyes
Of sleepy coachman, wakened so full well
For safety of his snoring “four insides,”
Unconscious innocents!—or on his pate—
His awful pate—even his, mine ancient foe,
Your ruthless enemy—the man of power,
Of measurement, and Acts of Parliament,
The great road dragon—man of flinty heart—
Belike ye showered the liquid crystal down,
Irreverend boughs! and so your fate was sealed.
But, veteran oak! what rank offence was thine?
In memory of man thou hadst not flung
One flickering shadow 'thwart the royal road,
Nor intercepted sunbeam from the head
Of noontide traveller. Only left of thee
The huge old trunk, still verdant in decay
With ivy garlands, and a tender growth—
Like second childhood—of thine own young shoots;
And there, like giant guardian of the pass,
Thou stoodst, majestic ruin! thy huge roots,
Whose every fretted niche and mossy cave
Harboured a primrose, grappling the steep bank,
A wayside rampart. Lo! they've rent away
The living bulwark now—a ghastly breach,
A crumbling hollow left to mark its site
And the proud march of utilitarian zeal.
I could have better spared a better thing
Than sight of thy familiar shapeless form,
Defaced and weather-stained. But thus it is
Where'er I turn me, wheresoe'er I look,
Change, change, change, change, is everywhere at work
In all mine ancient haunts. Grammercie, though!
Reform—improvement, is the proper word.
We live, God wot! in an improving age,
And our old world, if it last long enough,
Will reach perfection. Lo! conceptions vast
Germ not alone in patriot statesman's mind
Or great philanthropist's. Our public men—
Ours in this rural district nook o' the world,
“Armed with a little brief authority,”
Wield it like Jove's own thunder, and affect
The Olympic nod. Would they had nodded off
Their sapient heads, ere, in an evil hour,
Beautiful elms! your spreading branches fell,
Because, forsooth, across the King's highway,
Conspiring with the freeborn, “chartered” air,
Your verdant branches treasonably waved,
And swung perchance the pendant dewdrops off
62
Of sleepy coachman, wakened so full well
For safety of his snoring “four insides,”
Unconscious innocents!—or on his pate—
His awful pate—even his, mine ancient foe,
Your ruthless enemy—the man of power,
Of measurement, and Acts of Parliament,
The great road dragon—man of flinty heart—
Belike ye showered the liquid crystal down,
Irreverend boughs! and so your fate was sealed.
But, veteran oak! what rank offence was thine?
In memory of man thou hadst not flung
One flickering shadow 'thwart the royal road,
Nor intercepted sunbeam from the head
Of noontide traveller. Only left of thee
The huge old trunk, still verdant in decay
With ivy garlands, and a tender growth—
Like second childhood—of thine own young shoots;
And there, like giant guardian of the pass,
Thou stoodst, majestic ruin! thy huge roots,
Whose every fretted niche and mossy cave
Harboured a primrose, grappling the steep bank,
A wayside rampart. Lo! they've rent away
The living bulwark now—a ghastly breach,
A crumbling hollow left to mark its site
And the proud march of utilitarian zeal.
| The Poetical Works of Caroline Bowles Southey | |