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 pre sent To the four-quartered winds, robust and bold, Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply seems A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink, The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite. The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect. Stands now, and semblance only of itself! Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off 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 neighboring 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, |