Songs of the Seasons :: :: University of Virginia Library

There is life in this Acorn. Lay it
A finger's depth under the soil—
In a soil where nothing can fray it,
Nothing its forthcoming foil—
In a place, a hill-side or hollow,
Not remote from the dwellings of toil,
Where the corncrake copes with the swallow
In casting abroad for its spoil,

II

It will spring. The sun's early blessing
Will cherish it. Be not afraid!
The zephyrs will give it caressing—
The dew-fall quicken its blade.
In thy watch of the delicate treeling,
My affection for thee, merry maid!
I feel, and how rapturous the feeling!—
My devotion to thee is repaid!

III

It will grow, dearest lamb! with your growing,
And bud with your budding, Sweetheart!
And in your coming and going
Will play its own typical part.

175

In your visitings during the summer,
It will out with its leafy array;
But when rude carle Winter is comer,
It will cast its green mantle away.

IV

Say you?—but nine! and nine only?
You were five when we planted our tree
In a spot, I thought it too lonely—
Too like where a churchyard should be.
But you chose it, my darling! and chosen
By you, I do more than agree,
'Tis no garden to rear up a rose in,
But the Eden for you and for me.

V

And, my Pet! I have pride in our treeling;
The fourth of its May-days is nigh;
And if thine is the ninth—no concealing!—
Happy nine! happy four! happy I!
A sapling, a sylph, and a rhymer;
The marvel that dotard like me
Should entice my sweet pet from her primer,
To watch o'er the growth of a tree!

VI

No matter! the Acorn's springing
Is a tie 'twixt the old and the young,

176

'Twixt an ending and kind of beginning,
'Twixt the Sung and the promised Unsung!
Come forth, and look at our Sapling,
Ye grey-beards that cumber the glen!
Come forth at the morning's grey dappling,
When the mists are ascending the glen;
When with song-birds the skies are a-peopling,
And the fogs are forsaking the fen.

VII

Ye are nigh to the Valley of Vision
On whose verge is the trembling of knees;
But a sage, with the lip of decision,
Four-score old, may pronounce upon trees.
Speak out, Forest Ranger, that wert!
And tell of the Oaks of thy ken—
Of a giant that stood in the heart
Of the grenewood under the Ben.

VIII

“I am here, though my shoulders are weighted
With the burden of many long years—
Here, ready with all my griefs freighted,
To sail from a harbour of tears.
But you ask for the Oak, the old giant,
O'er-topping the rest of its kind,
With its joints and its spreadings defiant,
Whose joy is to battle the wind?

177

IX

Behold it! No older it seemeth
To me than it seemed in my youth;
I speak as a dreamer that dreameth,
And its seeming so may be untruth:
But then, in the days of my daffing,
It was reckoned the veteran tree,
And its health was a toast in the quaffing
Of healths at the sign of the Bee.

X

Its age is a leaf of Tradition;
They say 'twas the Tree of old Tryst,
Where the Priests of a gone Superstition
Conferred with the Herald of Christ—
Where a haughty Arch-Druid and cruel
Was baptised at the hands of a Saint,
And is now an immaculate jewel
In the Crown, without rust or attaint.

XI

A monarch, 'tis added, in reason,
Under its boughs was at rest,
When a shaft from the red hand of treason
Found its murderous way to his breast;
And the turf, by his life-wellings wetted,
Assumeth a crimson colour,
When the date comes round in its circle
That is wed to this deed of dolour.

178

XII

To idols had I been given—
Not knowing the God Supreme,
Mine own Fancy, the Maker of Heaven—
The Future shaped out of a dream—
The homage I owe to the Only
I'd have paid at the shrine of this Tree,
At the shrine, in the grene-wood so lonely,
Where I bent, as a lover, my knee.”

XIII

Years have passed. The old Forest Ranger
Sleeps his sleep in the Acre of God;
His office is held by the stranger—
A churl—an irreverent clod,
Who has neither humour nor fancy,
Nor courtesy in his grain,
Who values an oak by the footrule
And the guage of his timber brain.

XIV

He came to look at our Treeling
By invite from my pet and from me;
At a glance, 'twas a matter of dealing
I saw, put the pith in his knee.
A curse on his lips, but half smothered,
Told plainly the rage in his heart,
When he found, o'er its vaunted coëvals,
Our fav'rite was holding the start.

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XV

For he prided himself in his wood-craft,
And at the old Ranger's demise
Took, as his own due, the credit
Of instructing the Forest supplies;
And the coppice he vaunted of chiefly
Was an oak-wood, companion in years
To the tree which you and I, darling!
Have nurtured with smiles and with tears.

XVI

Twenty! say you? are you twenty?
Out of your teens? Is it so?
And I—I look back on my plenty
Of years, and the long, long ago;
I look back, but only a shadow
Is left of the things that have been;
Yet my staff and my pet are beside me,
Before us an oak of fifteen!

XVII

And where is its proud predecessor—
The Tree of the Ranger's regard—
The King from whose loins started Forests,
And gave birth to the Hymns of the Bard?—
The veteran nursed by the Pagan—
Redeemed by a knight of the Cross—
The Oak, whose each leaf was a legend—
A waif tale for the Tempest to toss?

180

XVIII

From whose acorns sprung, with their Tree-life,
The Navies, whose Flag is unfurled,
In the twin names of Commerce and Freedom,
Everywhere over the World?
The enterprise, courage, and sinew,
The might of our sea-faring folk—
Their lion-like faces, and rugged,
Which are carved from the limbs of the oak,
Cast and carved from the bole of the oak.

XIX

A thousand summers and winters,
Each in its turn had passed
Over the brow of the idol,
The kiss of the zephyr and blast—
The sun's red heat in the dog-days,
The torrents from skies overcast,
Dew-falls, Ice-bolts, and Fire-bolts,
And the Angel that scatters the Mast.

XX

But it stood in high dudgeon and haughty,
With its forehead erect in disdain,
And the look of a growing Immortal
Beginning his infinite reign.
Where is it?—the Lord of the Forest?
The tree of the Ranger's regard,
Whose each birth-morn heaped promise on promise,
And opened the lips of the Bard?

181

XXI

A churl—a rude hewer of timber—
A worker with axe and with saw—
A trader in divots and lumber,
Counsel took with a limb of the law;
And the sentence pronounced by the hireling,
Without upper court of review,
Save the Angels that shall be Avengers,
Was, “To-morrow, Old Timber! for you!”

XXII

On the morrow the hewers assembled—
Seven woodmen, noisy with brag,
Who looked on a tree, as the Stalker
Looks on a sure-at-hand Stag.
The Tree had its vengeance in falling,
The lawyer (small subject for grace
Taken any way) cheated the hangman;
But the brass of his tongue and his face

XXIII

Was no metal to vie with the Monarch
He thought to make gold of and gain;
And the fellow, next door to the felon,
Was felled with worse schemes in his brain.
Ah! well! the kings of the Forest
Do justly, while dropping the crown,
In the farewell wave of their sceptres,
By casting the insolent down—

182

XXIV

By shewing the strength of their sinews,
And the valorous life in their core,
And their ken of the Vexer and Doomster,
Who lays the cold axe at their door.

XXV

Five years have gone by, and my darling
Has entered the days of her prime,
And her figure, so gracefully moulded,
Defies all description in rhyme;
When the woman has cast off her girlhood,
Its pertness and shyness combined,
And towers, like a castle of beauty,
Over the rest of her kind.

XXVI

Faultless in face and in figure—
Artless, but having the art
Of fending off empty admirers,
Who bid high for her hand and her heart.
“What ails you, my pet—my own darling?
This is your birth-day. In tears?
Surely, no shadow of sorrow
Will darken your happiest years!

183

XXVII

“We shall go and visit our oakling;
The time has come round, and the day,
When the Tree-Spirit, glad and expectant,
On tip-toe waiteth the May;
And its arms will wave like a bridegroom's
Arrayed in the true Lincoln green,
Bearing a promise of acorns
In the coming autumnal sheen.”

XXVIII

“Uncle, I have my misgivings;
Dear uncle! I cannot tell why;
But the shadow you dread creepeth o'er me,
And its Caster must come by and by.
Take my arm; we shall off to our treeling;
The birds used to whistle the way;
And you, my fond uncle, looked gayer
A thought or two. Was it so? say.”

XXIX

“No wonder, my darling, and brisker;
Not happier—no, I am wrong;
My happiness takes its reflection
From the child of my heart and my song.
Ah! well. There is cause for surmising—
Room for a grief to step in—
Place for a shadow to rest on;
But to keep up the heart is to win!

184

XXX

“My jewel! be true to your nature,
Take heart, keep it up to the end,
And bring in the help-hand of duty
To do its good part as a friend.
But where is our oakling, my darling?
Have I mistaken the spot?
Here, surely? It never was elsewhere;
But tell me, I may have forgot?

XXXI

“I'm so blind, and my memory fails me;
Yet my heart! it has eyes of its own,
And the memories given to its keeping
Are memories none can dethrone.
Ah! you are troubled and silent;
Speak, is it so? my own pet!
Some evil has chanced to our favourite—
A sorrow to us—a regret—

XXXII

“A wound that will heal before sunset—
A cross that at dawning will vanish;
One tear should avail to erase it—
One sigh and a hand's waft to banish.”
“Dear uncle! my fondest of uncles,
Our hearts were wrapt up in that tree;
Mine was and yours was, I know it,
And its fate is the forecast to me

185

XXXIII

“Of a something—I cannot define it—
Creeping on, stealing on, like a chill,
That withers the leaf and the blossom,
And curdles the sap at its will.
A shape that belongs to the grave-yard
Holds in my day-dreams its part,
And at night, by my couch leaning o'er me,
Trammels the flow from my heart.

XXXIV

“A hand is dividing the curtain,
And beckons and beckons alway;
I cannot resist it, dear uncle!
But am bound by my fate to obey.”
“Prop of my life! of its lingerings
Cheerer! the Help on the way!
I have lived on your love, and had trusted
To live on it many a day!

XXXV

“A blight had it been—the consumer
Travelling up by degrees
From the root to the crown of our oakling,
I might have divined your unease.
But man has been here, not the Angel
Appointed—the silent pursuer—
A man, and a demon within him,
Armed with the axe of the hewer.”

186

XXXVI

“Not less, dearest uncle, an omen!
Our oakling has gone from its place;
We made it too much of an idol—
Trusted too much to the grace
Of the hireling. Ah! now it is over!
Seek him out, and spare not the cost!
Six days hence—say a full fortnight—
A fortnight, or three weeks at most.

XXXVII

“No matter! the time is approaching,
Seek him out, without grudge or delay;
He will drive a preposterous bargain,
But let him for once have his way.
Of our oakling we must have the timber
Two coffins to make of—no more;
Mine will be needed too early,
Before the green summer is o'er.

XXXVIII

“Yours—ah! I know not the whether
To wish you to follow or stay;
I meant it a gift of remembrance—
No! one is enough for its day.
Better not vex nor distress you—
Better not darken the hour
That is passing with gloomy forecastings—
Preceding the Terrible Power.

187

XXXIX

“Fare thee well! A dream of our oakling,
The dream of its Fate and of Thee
Across my soul's vision is fleeting,
Dear Uncle! come quickly to me!”
And this was the last of my darling:
I live, but my life is a dream,
And the dream is the life-time remaining;
I wait to go on with the stream.