  A A WORD of grief to me erewhile: We have cut the oak down, in our isle. And I said: “Ye have bereaven The song-thrush and the bee, And the fisher-boy at sea Of his sea-mark in the even; And gourds of cooling shade, to lie Within the sickle’s sound; And the old sheep-dog’s loyal eye Of sleep on duty’s ground; And poets of their tent And quiet tenement. Ah, impious! who so paid Such fatherhood, and made Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade.” For the hewn oak a century fair, A wound in earth, an ache in air. And I said: “No pillared height With a summer daÏs over, Where a dryad fled her lover Through the long arcade of light; Nor ’neath Arcturus rolleth more, Since the loud leaves are gone, Between the shorn cliff and the shore, Pan’s organ antiphon. Some nameless envy fed This blow at grandeur’s head: Some breathed reproach o’erdue, Degenerate men, ye drew! Then, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew.” |
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