UPON the lonely, wind-swept crest,

Where the hill-summit fronts the west,

Set like gaunt sentinels in row

To watch the seasons come and go,

In stalwart and unbending lines,

There stands a row of hoary pines.

Long have they stood, and much have seen,

Deer couched once in their coverts green,

The Indian paused his bow to string,

The wild cat crouched before its spring,

And from deep hollows far below

The wolf’s long howl rang o’er the snow.

Sleek kine and browsing sheep now stray

Where once was heard the wolves’ wild bay,

The red man fading slow made place

For an encroaching, stronger race,

And on the once lonely, rocky height

A church uprears its steeple white.

Scorning such human accidents,

Broadening their green circumference,

Each year made taller, statelier still,

The pine trees topped the wind-swept hill,

And surged responsive melodies

Like simulated sounds of seas.

Till yesterday their century long

Companionship held firm and strong,

Then a wild bolt of lightning sped

And smote their leader’s lofty head,

Plunging a ghastly deep-scarred line

Down the brown trunk of the old pine.

Still does he rear his head on high,

Still stanchly fronts the sun and sky,

Still do his needles in soft tunes

Make sea songs for the summer moons,

Veiling the deadly wound and blight;

But all the same he died last night.

For a brief space his stricken form

May bide the buffet of the storm,

While the deep rift within his heart

Widens and tears his trunk apart,

Ah, gallant heart, so firm to bear,

So resolute to face despair,

Hiding the grievous hurt away

Which saps thy being day by day,

And simulating with hard strife

The bearing and the look of life.

Patience is strong, and strong is faith,

But mightier still the power of death;

Thy flesh is weaker than thy pain,

Vain is the struggle, all in vain.

Heaven’s bolt of doom was surely sped,

And even to-day we count thee dead.