Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.
While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled Slow after century, a giant bulk
Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed With prominent wens globose; till at the last The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict On other mighty ones, found also thee.
What exhibitions various hath the world Witnessed, of mutability in all
That we account most durable below! Change is the diet on which all subsist, Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them-skies uncertain, now the heat Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds
Calm and alternate storm, moisture, and drought, Invigorate by turns the springs of life
In all that live, plant, animal, and man,
*And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,
Fine passing thought, e'en in her coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain
The force that agitates not unimpaired;
But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.
Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth From almost nullity into a state
Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, Slow, into such magnificent decay.
Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been
When tempests could not. At thy firmest age
Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents
That might have ribbed the sides and planked the deck Of some flagged admiral; and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present To the four-quartered winds, robust and bold, Warped into tough knee-timber, many a load ! But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply The bottomless demands of contest waged For senatorial honours. Thus to Time The task was left to whittle thee away With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge, Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more, Disjoining from the rest, has unobserved, Achieved a labour which had, far and wide, By man performed, made all the forest ring.
Embowelled now, and of thy ancient self Possessing naught but the scooped rind that seems A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink, Which it would give in rivulets to thy root, Thou temptest none, but rather much forbiddest The feller's toil which thou couldst ill requite. Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock, A quarry of stout spurs and knotted fangs, Which, crooked into a thousand whimsies, clasp The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect.
So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid, Though all the superstructure, by the tooth Pulverized of venality, a shell
Stands now, and semblance only of itself!
Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off 125
Long since, and rovers of the forest wild
With bow and shaft have burnt them. Some have left A splintered stump bleached to a snowy white; And some memorial none where once they grew.
Yet Life still lingers in thee, and puts forth Proof not contemptible of what she can, Even where Death predominates. The spring Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received Half a millennium since the date of thine. But since, although well qualified by age To teach, no Spirit dwells in thee, nor voice May be expected from thee, seated here
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, save the scene, I will perform Myself the oracle, and will discourse In my own ear such matter as I may. One man alone, the father of us all, Drew not his life from woman; never gazed, With mute unconsciousness of what he saw, On all around him; learned not by degrees, Nor owed articulation to his ear; But moulded by his Maker into man At once, upstood intelligent, surveyed All creatures, with precision understood Their purport, uses, properties, resigned To each his name significant, and filled
With love and wisdom, rendered back to Heaven
In praise harmonious the first air he drew. He was excused the penalties of dull
Minority. No tutor charged his hand
With the thought-tracing quill, or tasked his mind With problems. History, not wanted yet,
Leaned on her elbow, watching Time, whose course Eventful, should supply her with a theme;
A POET'S cat, sedate and grave As poet well could wish to have, Was much addicted to inquire For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick- Nature perhaps herself had cast her In such a mould philosophique,
Or else she learned it of her master. Sometimes ascending, debonair, An apple tree, or lofty pear,
Lodged with convenience in the fork, She watched the gardener at his work; Sometimes her ease and solace sought In an old empty watering pot; There, wanting nothing save a fan, To seem some nymph in her sedan Apparelled in exactest sort,
And ready to be borne to court.
But love of change, it seems, has place,
Not only in our wiser race;
Cats also feel, as well as we,
That passion's force, and so did she.
Her climbing, she began to find, Exposed her too much to the wind, And the old utensil of tin
Was cold and comfortless within:
She therefore wished instead of those Some place of more serene repose,
Where neither cold might come, nor air Too rudely wanton with her hair, And sought it in the likeliest mode Within her master's snug abode.
A drawer, it chanced, at bottom lined With linen of the softest kind, With such as merchants introduce From India, for the ladies' use,
A drawer impending o'er the rest, Half open in the topmost chest, Of depth enough, and none to spare, Invited her to slumber there; Puss with delight beyond expression Surveyed the scene, and took possession.
Recumbent at her ease, ere long, And lulled by her own humdrum song, She left the cares of life behind,
And slept as she would sleep her last, When in came, housewifely inclined,
The chambermaid, and shut it fast; By no malignity impelled,
But all unconscious whom it held.
Awakened by the shock (cried Puss)
'Was ever cat attended thus?
'The open drawer was left, I see,
'Merely to prove a nest for me,
'For soon as I was well composed,
'Then came the maid, and it was closed,
'How smooth these 'kerchiefs, and how sweet!
That night, by chance, the poet watching, Heard an inexplicable scratching;
His noble heart went pit-a-pat,
And to himself he said-'What's that?'
He drew the curtain at his side,
And forth he peeped, but nothing spied.
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