CLXVII.THE DAILY TREE.
I
Queen Mary said that on her heart,
Engraven there as with a dart,
Transferred by bitter thought,
The name of Calais would be found
In cypher legible and round,
By meditation wrought.
II
And I believe that through the eye
The household forms, which round us lie
In sweet and shapely mass,
Things daily touched and seen and heard,
By sympathetic power transferred,
Upon the spirit pass.
III
In childish days there was to me
A yearly vision of the sea;
And now within my soul
I never cease to see and hear,
In wood or mountain, far or near,
That estuary roll.
IV
My mother's voice, from this fair world
Withdrawn long years ago, is furled
In my retentive ear,
And oft by sweet surprises taken,
I hear familiar accents waken
A startling echo near.
V
I daily see an old Scotch fir,
Of such a beauty as to stir
My heart with joyous thrill:
My days would scarce be what they are,
If that tree were not always there,
A shadow soft and still.
VI
It is a pleasure overnight
To think how morning's beams will light
Its fan-like summit airy;
And sure I am that it must lie
Pencilled upon my memory,
Moonlit, and visionary.
VII
There must be pictured on my soul
Its ruddy and fantastic bole,
Where snaky lights glide down;
For fancy frequent vision weaves
Among its wiry, blue-green leaves,
And quiet plumy crown.
VIII
And when the breath of evening rocks
That ancient tree with harmless shocks,
The two birds cradled there,
With sea-like murmurs round them, ride,
Their vessel anchored on the tide,
A sweet, love-mated pair.
IX
I love thee, reverend old Tree!
For thou art verily to me
Like some kind household god.
What visitations of delight,
What aspects mutable and bright,
Hast thou not daily showed!
X
O didst thou grow in sunken dell,
Within the sound of abbey-bell,
Hard by the cloistered square,
Like some illuminated book
Would be thy variable look
Unto the inmates there.
XI
I would some monk of olden times
Had watched thee from the matin chimes
Until the compline rung,
And chronicled thy light and shade,
In hieroglyphic show displayed,
As thy broad branches swung.
XII
Thou wouldst have been his world, a chaste
And sinless record for thy past;
And yet a form to fear
And meekly think of, as a thing
That might its placid umbrage fling
Upon his tombstone near.
XIII
I have seen morning on it fall,
And intersect its coronal
With silver lines on high,
And sunset clothe its giant limb
In huge bronze armour, bright and dim
In scales alternately.
XIV
And when around its rugged waist
The twilight's roseate air is braced
In clasps of amethyst,
It were a sceptre most sublime
For fabulous kings of olden time,
Wielded by giant wrist.
XV
And oft with transmutation slow
Have I beheld the rough stem glow,
Red gold without a stain,
When diligent wet mists come down
And, dripping from the feathery crown,
Burnish the bole with rain.
XVI
And I have seen a weight of snow
On its strained branches drooping low,
Dividing the dense crown;
Like cares from off an old man's heart,
All noiselessly the bent boughs part,
And the white flakes fall down.
XVII
And often in the breathless noon,
Or else beneath the unclouded moon,
It is absorbed on high;
But most I love its sable hue
Imbedded in the yielding blue
Of a translucent sky.
XVIII
O quiet Image! thou art lent
To be a moral incident
Each passing day to me,
In all I do and all I think
A gentle and restraining link,—
How much I owe to thee!
XIX
The wind rose up: our dreary way
Through the Bavarian fir-woods lay,
Near Rothenburg's old wall;
My own memorial fir-tree wrought
Deep in my heart, with anxious thought
Lest it that night should fall.
XX
Ye wild north winds! that o'er the length
Of moaning heath collect your strength,
That noble fir-tree spare,
When all the laurel-borders through
Your sad triumphal road ye hew,
And rend the coppice fair!
XXI
Be true to its old anchor, Earth!
That it may long a moral mirth
Within the vale abide!
When I am gone I would that ye
Should still enjoy that princely tree,
Kind Hearts of Ambleside!
