Great trees that o'er us grow—
Green leaves that gather round them—the fresh hues,
That tell of fruit, and blossoms yet to blow,
Opening fond bosoms to the embracing dews;
These, now so bright,
That deck the slopes about thy childhood's home,
And seem, in long duration, to thy sight,
As they had promise of perpetual bloom;
So linked with all
The first dear throbs of feeling in thy heart,
When, at the dawn of summer and of fall,
Thou weptst the leaf that must so soon depart!
What had all these,
Of frail, deciduous nature, to persuade,
Howe'er their sweets might charm, and beauty please,
The memories that their own could never aid?
They kept no tale—
No solemn history of the fruitful hour;
The lover's promise, the beloved one's wail—
To wake the dead leaf in each lonely bower!
The autumn breath
O'erthrew each frail memorial of their past;
And every token was resigned to death,
In the first summons of the northern blast.
They nourished naught
That to the chain of moral being binds
The recollections of the once gay spot,
And its sweet offices, to future minds.
Thou may'st repair—
Thou, who hast loved in summer-eve to glide
With her whom thou hast still beheld as fair,
When she no longer wandered by thy side.
And thou wilt weep
Each altered aspect of that happiest home,
Which saw the joys its memories could not keep,
Save by the sympathy which shares their doom.
Thus Ruin stands
For Ruin—and the wreck of favorite things,
To him who o'er the waste but wrings his hands,
Proofs of the fall, and not the spring-time brings.
Ah! who will weep,
In after seasons, when thou too art gone,
Within this grot, where shadowy memories keep
Their watch above the realm they keep alone?
Who will lament,
In fruitless tears, that she the dear one died,
And thy surviving heart, in languishment,
Soon sought the grave and withered at her side?
A newer bright
Makes young the woods—and bowers that not to thee
Brought fruit or blossom, triumph in the sight
Of those who naught but fruit and blossom see;
To whom no voice
Whispers, that through the loved one's would the root
Of that exulting shrub, with happiest choice,
Has gone, with none its passage to dispute.
While thine own heart,
In neighboring hillock, conscious, it may be—
Quivers to see the fibres rend and part
The fair white breast which was so dear to thee.
Of all the past,
That precious history of thy love and youth,
When not a cloud thy happy dawn o'ercast,
When all thou felt'st was joy, thou saw'st was truth;
These have no speech
For idiot seasons that still come and go—
To whom the heart no offices can teach,
Vainer than breezes that at midnight blow!
And yet there seem
Memorials still in nature, which are taught,—
Unless all pleasant fancies be a dream,
To bring our sweetest histories back to thought.
A famous tree
Was this, three hundred years ago, when stood
The hunter-chief below it, bold and free,
Proud in his painted pomp and deeds of blood.
By hunger taught,
He gathered the brown acorn in its shade,
And ere he slept, still gazing upward, caught
Sweet glimpses of the night, in stars arrayed.
His hatchet sunk
With sharp wound, fixing his own favorite sign,
Deep in the living column of its trunk,
Where thou may'st read a history such as thine.
He, too, could feel
Such passion as awakes the noble soul—
And in fond hour, perchance, would hither steal,
With one, of all his tribe, who could his ire control.
And others signs,
Tokens of races, greatlier taught, that came
To write like record, though in smoother lines,
And thus declare a still more human flame.
Here love's caprice—
The hope, the doubt, the dear despondencies—-
Joy that had never rest, hope without peace—
These each declared the grief he never flies.
And the great oak
Grew sacred to each separate pilgrimage,
Nor heeded, in his bulk, the sudden stroke
That scarred his giant trunk with seams of age.
And we who gaze
Upon each, rude memorial—letter and date—
Still undefaced by storm and length of days,
Stand, as beneath the shadow of a fate!
Some elder-born,
A sire of wood and vale, guardian and king
Of separate races, unsubdued, unshorn,
Whose memories grasp the lives of every meaner thing!
With great white beard
Far streaming with a prophet-like display,
Such as when Moses on the Mount appeared,
And prostrate tribes looked down, or looked away!
With outstretched arms,
Paternal, as if blessing—with a grace,
Such as, in strength and greatness, ever charms,
As wooing the subdued one to embrace!
Thus still it stood,
While the broad forests, 'neath the pioneer,
Perished—proud relic of the ancient wood—
Men loved the record-tree, and bade them spare!
And still at noon,
Repairing to its shadow, they explore
Its chronicles, still musing o'er th' unknown,
And telling well-known histories, told of yore!
We shall leave ours,
Dear heart! and when our sleep beneath its boughs
Shall suffer spring to spread o'er us her flowers,
Eyes that vow love like ours shall trace our vows.