Defign'd thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The foft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should fleep the winter through.
So Fancy dreams. Difprove it, if ye can,
Ye reafoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employ'd too oft amifs,
Sifts half the pleasures of fhort life away!
Thou fell'ft mature; and, in the loamy clod Swelling with vegetative force instinct,
Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins,
Now ftars; two lobes, protruding, pair'd exact;
A leaf fucceeded, and another leaf,
And, all the elements thy puny growth
Foftering propitious, thou becamest a twig.
Who lived when thou waft fuch? Oh, couldst thou speak,
As in Dodona once thy kindred trees
Oracular, I would not curious afk
The future, best unknown, but, at thy mouth
Inquifitive, the less ambiguous past.
By thee I might correct, erroneous oft,
The clock of history, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recovering, and mistated setting right-
Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again!
Time made thee what thou waft, king of the
And Time hath made thee what thou art a cave For owls to rooft in. Once thy fpreading boughs O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet fafe-fhelter'd from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now. Thou haft outlived
Thy popularity, and art become
(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing
Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.
While thus thro' all the ftages thou haft pufh'd Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then fapling; and, as century roll'd Slow after century, a giant bulk
Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root Upheaved above the foil, and fides emboff'd With prominent wens globofe,-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 Witneff'd of mutability in all
That we account moft durable below!
Change is the diet on which all fubfift,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them.
Skies uncertain now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the folar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds-
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the fprings of life
In all that live, plant, animal, and man,
And in conclufion mar them.
Fine paffing thought, e'en in their coarseft works,
Delight in agitation, yet fuftain
The force that agitates not unimpair'd;
But worn by frequent impulfe, to the cause
Of their beft tone their diffolution owe.
Thought cannot fpend itself, comparing ftill
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almoft nullity into a state
Of matchless grandeur, and declenfion thence,
Slow, into fuch magnificent decay.
Time was when, fettling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been At thy firmest age
When tempefts could not.
Thou hadst within thy bole folid contents
That might have ribb'd the fides and plank'd the deck
Of some flagg'd admiral; and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four-quarter'd winds, robuft and bold,
Warp'd into tough knee-timber,* many a load!
But the axe fpared thee. In those thriftier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to fupply
The bottomlefs demands of contest waged
For fenatorial honours. Thus to Time
The task was left to whittle thee away
With his fly scythe, whofe ever-nibbling edge,
Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more,
Disjoining from the reft, has unobserved,
Achieved a labour which had, far and wide,
By man perform'd, made all the forest ring.
Embowel'd now, and of thy ancient self
Poffefling nought but the scoop'd rind, that seems
A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root,
* Knee-timber is found in the crooked arms of oak, which, by reafon of their distortion, are easily adjusted to the angle formed where the deck and the fhip's fides meet.
Thou tempteft none, but rather much forbidd'st
The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite.
Yet is thy root fincere, found as the rock,
A quarry of ftout fpurs and knotted fangs,
Which, crook'd into a thousand whimsies, clafp
The ftubborn foil, and hold thee ftill erect.
So ftands a kingdom, whose foundation yet
Fails not, in virtue and in wifdom laid,
Though all the fuperftructure, by the tooth
Pulverized of venality, a shell
Stands now, and femblance only of itself!
Thine arms have left thee.
Long fince, and rovers of the forest wild
With bow and shaft have burnt them. Some have
A splinter'd stump bleach'd to a snowy white;
And fome, memorial none where once they grew.
Yet life ftill lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even where death predominates. The spring
Finds thee not lefs alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received
Half a millenium fince the date of thine.
But fince, although well qualified by age
To teach, no fpirit dwells in thee, nor voice
May be expected from thee, feated here
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, fave the fcene, I will perform
Myfelf the oracle, and will difcourfe
In my own ear fuch 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; learn'd not by degrees,
Nor owed articulation to his ear;
But, moulded by his Maker into man
At once, upftood intelligent, furvey'd
All creatures, with precifion understood
Their purport, uses, properties, affign'd
To each his name fignificant, and, fill'd
With love and wisdom, render'd 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 tafk'd his mind
With problems. Hiftory, not wanted yet,
Lean'd on her elbow, watching Time, whose course,
Eventful, should supply her with a theme.
Which the Author heard fing on New Year's Day,
HENCE is it that, amazed, I hear
From yonder wither'd spray,
This foremost morn of all the year,
The melody of May?
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