His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, In outline like enormous beaker, fit For hand of Jotun, where mid snow and mist He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, I know not by what grace,- for in the blood Of our New World subduers lingers yet Hereditary feud with trees, they being (They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes, Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, There should be some to watch and keep alive All beautiful beliefs. And such was that, By solitary shepherd first surmised Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, Or was transfused in something to which thought Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, Gone from me like an ache, and what remained Become a part of the universal joy. My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, Saw its white double in the stream below; Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, I was the wind that dappled the lush grass, The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, The thin-winged swallow skating on the air; The life that gladdened everything was mine. Was I then truly all that I beheld? Across the river's hollow heaven below same? But suddenly the sound of human voice Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours, Doth in opacous cloud precipitate Into an essence rarer than its own, For here not long is solitude secure, Rippled with western winds, the dusty Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow warm, seats, . Making an o'erturned box their table. Himself his large estate and only charge, | Between the branches of the tree fixed Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of His equal now, divinely unemployed. man, The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at What's my thought like? With whom the age chivalric ever bides, eyes, Some secret league with wild wood-Climb high to swing and shout on perilwandering things; He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot By right of birth exonerate from toil, The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair, A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, lous ways, And many men and manners he hath seen, Not without fruit of solitary thought. Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, Nor wants my tree more punctual vis- The children, they who are the only rich, - for still with them profane ous boughs, Image the larger world; for wheresoe'er To dead leaves disenchanted, -- long ago | In the small welkin of a drop of dew. |