PART III.

The deed is done: the Tree is low

That stood so long and firm;

The Woodman and his axe are gone,

His toil has found its term;

And where he wrought the speckled Thrush

Securely hunts the worm.

The Cony from the sandy bank

Has run a rapid race,

Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern,

To seek the open space;

And on its haunches sits erect

To clean its furry face.

The dappled Fawn is close at hand,

The Hind is browsing near,—

And on the Larch's lowest bough

The Ousel whistles clear;

But checks the note

Within its throat,

As choked with sudden fear!

With sudden fear her wormy quest

The Thrush abruptly quits —

Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern

The startled Cony flits;

And on the Larch's lowest bough

No more the Ousel sits.

With sudden fear

The dappled Deer

Effect a swift escape;

But well might bolder creatures start,

And fly, or stand agape,

With rising hair, and curdled blood,

To see so grim a Shape!

The very sky turns pale above;

The earth grows dark beneath;

The human Terror thrills with cold

And draws a shorter breath —

An universal panic owns

The dread approach of DEATH!

With silent pace, as shadows come,

And dark as shadows be,

The grisly Phantom takes his stand

Beside the fallen Tree,

And scans it with his gloomy eyes,

And laughs with horrid glee —

A dreary laugh and desolate,

Where mirth is void and null,

As hollow as its echo sounds

Within the hollow skull —

“Whoever laid this tree along,

His hatchet was not dull!

“The human arm and human tool

Have done their duty well!

But after sound of ringing axe

Must sound the ringing knell;

When Elm or Oak

Have felt the stroke,

My turn it is to fell!

“No passive unregarded tree,

A senseless thing of wood,

Wherein the sluggish sap ascends

To swell the vernal bud —

But conscious, moving, breathing trunks

That throb with living blood!

“No forest Monarch yearly clad

In mantle green or brown;

That unrecorded lives, and falls

By hand of rustic clown —

But Kings who don the purple robe,

And wear the jewell'd crown.

“Ah! little recks the Royal mind,

Within his Banquet Hall,

While tapers shine and Music breathes

And Beauty leads the Ball,—

He little recks the oaken plank

Shall be his palace wall!

“Ah, little dreams the haughty Peer,

The while his Falcon flies —

Or on the blood-bedabbled turf

The antler'd quarry dies —

That in his own ancestral Park

The narrow dwelling lies!

“But haughty Peer and mighty King

One doom shall overwhelm!

The oaken cell

Shall lodge him well

Whose sceptre ruled a realm —

While he, who never knew a home,

Shall find it in the Elm!

“The tatter'd, lean, dejected wretch,

Who begs from door to door,

And dies within the cressy ditch,

Or on the barren moor,

The friendly Elm shall lodge and clothe

That houseless man and poor!

“Yea, this recumbent rugged trunk,

That lies so long and prone,

With many a fallen acorn-cup,

And mast, and furry cone —

This rugged trunk shall hold its share

Of mortal flesh and bone!

“A Miser hoarding heaps of gold,

But pale with ague-fears —

A Wife lamenting love's decay,

With secret cruel tears,

Distilling bitter, bitter drops

From sweets of former years —

“A Man within whose gloomy mind

Offence had deeply sunk,

Who out of fierce Revenge's cup

Hath madly, darkly drunk —

Grief, Avarice, and Hate shall sleep

Within this very trunk!

“This massy trunk that lies along,

And many more must fall —

For the very knave

Who digs the grave,

The man who spreads the pall,

And he who tolls the funeral bell,

The Elm shall have them all!

“The tall abounding Elm that grows

In hedgerows up and down;

In field and forest, copse and park,

And in the peopled town,

With colonies of noisy rooks

That nestle on its crown.

“And well th’ abounding Elm may grow

In field and hedge so rife,

In forest, copse, and wooded park,

And‘ mid the city's strife,

For, every hour that passes by

Shall end a human life!”

The Phantom ends: the shade is gone;

The sky is clear and bright;

On turf, and moss, and fallen Tree,

There glows a ruddy light;

And bounding through the golden fern

The Rabbit comes to bite.

The Thrush's mate beside her sits

And pipes a merry lay;

The Dove is in the evergreen;

And on the Larch's spray

The Fly-bird flutters up and down,

To catch its tiny prey.

The gentle Hind and dappled Fawn

Are coming up the glade;

Each harmless furr'd and feather'd thing

Is glad, and not afraid —

But on my sadden'd spirit still

The Shadow leaves a shade.

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,

As though by certain mark

I knew the fore-appointed Tree,

Within whose rugged bark

This warm and living frame shall find

Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic Tree which breathed to me

A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground;

Within that shady Avenue

Where lofty Elms abound.