Death among the Trees

Death walketh in the forest.The tall pinesDo woo the lightning-flash, and through their veinsThe fire-cup, darting, leaves their blackened trunksA tablet, for ambition's sons to readTheir destiny. The oak, that centuries spared,Grows grey at last, and like some time-worn manStretching out palsied arms, doth feebly copeWith the destroyer, while its gnarled rootsBetray their trust. The towering elm turns pale,

And faintly strews the sere and yellow leaf,While from its dead arms falls the wedded vine.The sycamore uplifts a beacon brow,Denuded of its honors, and the blast,Swaying the withered willow, rudely asksFor its lost grace, and for its tissued leaf,With silver lined.I knew that blight might checkThe sapling, ere kind Nature's hand could weaveIts first spring-coronal, and that the worm,Coiling itself amid our garden-plants,Did make their unborn buds its sepulchre.And well I knew how wild and wrecking windsMight take the forest-monarchs by the crown,And lay them with the lowliest vassal-herb;And that the axe, with its sharp ministry,Might, in one hour, such revolution work,As all Earth's boasted power could never hopeTo re-instate. And I had seen the flameGo crackling up, amid yon verdant boughs,And with a tyrant's insolence dissolveTheir interlacing, till I felt that man,For sordid gain would make the forest's pompIts heaven-raised arch and living tracery,One funeral-pyre.But, yet I did not deemThat pale Disease amid those shades would stealAs to a sickly maiden's cheek, and wasteThe power and plenitude of those high ranks,Which in their peerage and nobility,Unrivalled and unchronicled, had reigned.And so I said if in this world of knells

And open tombs, there lingereth one whose dreamIs of aught permanent below the skies,Even let him come and muse among the trees,For they shall be his teachers; they shall bowTo Wisdom's lessons his forgetful ear,And, by the whisper of their faded leaves,Soften to his sad heart the thought of death.