YARDLEY OAK.
Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth,
(Since which I number threescore winters past),
A shatter’d veteran, hollow-trunk’d perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages! Could a mind, imbued
With truth from Heaven, created thing adore,
I might with rev’rence kneel, and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather Druids in their oaks,
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Lov’d not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscrib’d, as to a refuge, fled.
Thou wast a bauble once; a cup-and-ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin’d
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thy embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But Fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellow’d the soil
Design’d thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof, nibbling the glebe, prepar’d
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So Fancy dreams. Disprove it if ye can
Ye reas’ners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument employ’d too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasure of short life away!
Thou fill’st nature; and in the loamy clod,
Swelling with vegetative force instinct,
Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins,
Now stars; two lobes protruding, pair’d exact;
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,
And, all the elements thy puny growth
Fost’ring propitious, thou becam’st a twig.
Who liv’d when thou wast such? O couldst thou speak
As in Dodona once, thy kindred trees,
Oracular, I would not curious ask
The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.
By thee I might correct, erroneous oft,
The clock of History, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recov’ring, and misstated, setting right—
Desp’rate attempt, till trees shall speak again!
Time made thee what thou wast, king of the wood;
And Time hath made thee what thou art—a cave
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs
O’erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks
That graz’d it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-shelter’d from the storm.
No flocks frequent thee now. Thou hast outlived
Thy popularity, and art become
(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing
Forgotten as the foliage of thy youth.
While thus through all the stages thou hast push’d
Of treeship—first a seedling, hid in grass;
Then twig; then sapling; and as cent’ry roll’d
Slow after century, a giant-bulk
Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion’d root
Upheav’d above the soil, and sides emboss’d
With prominent wens globose—till at the last
The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.
* * * * *
William Cowper, 1731–1800.