Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/317

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Words, Old Tree! Thou hast an aspect fair, A vigorous heart, a heaven-aspiring crest, And sleepless memories of the days that were Lodge in thy branches, like the song-bird's nest.

Words! give us words! Methought a gathering blast Mid its green leaves began to murmur low, Shaping its utterance to the mighty Past, That backward came, on pinions floating slow.

"The ancient masters of the soil I knew,   Whose cane-roofed wigwams flecked the forest brown, Their hunter-footsteps swept the early dew,    And their keen arrow struck the eagle down.

I heard the bleak December tempest moan, When the tossed May-Flower moored in Plymouth Bay; And watched yon classic walls, as stone by stone The fathers reared them slowly towards the day.