Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/72

 56 DEATH AMONG THE TREES.

And well I know how wild and wrecking winds Might take the forest-monarchs by the crown, And lay them with the lowliest vassal-herb ; And that the axe, with its sharp ministry, Might, in one hour, such revolution work As all Earth's boasted power could never hope To re-instate. And I had seen the flame Go crackling up amid yon verdant boughs, And, with a tyrant's insolence, dissolve Their interlacing, till I felt that man, For sordid gain, would make the forest's pomp, Its heaven-raised arch, and living tracery, One funeral-pyre.

But yet I did not deem

That pale disease amid those shades would steal, As to a sickly maiden's cheek, and waste The power and plenitude of those high ranks, Which in their peerage and nobility, Unrivalled and unchronicled, had reigned.

And so I said, if in this world of knells And open tombs, there lingereth one whose dream Is of aught permanent below the skies, Even let him come and muse among the trees, For they shall be his teachers ; they shall bow To Wisdom's lessons his forgetful ear, And, by the whisper of their faded leaves, Soften to his sad heart the thought of death.

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