Its billowy foliage through the air,
And the calm stars did far and spare
O'erswim the masses everywhere
Save when the overtopping pines
Did bar their tremulous light with lines
All fixed and black. Now the moon shines
A broader glory. You may see
The trees grow rarer presently;
The air blows up more fresh and free:
Until they come from dark to light,
And from the forest to the sight
Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night,
A fiery throb in every star,
Those burning arteries that are
The conduits of God's life afar,—
A wild brown moorland underneath,
And four pools breaking up the heath
With white low gleamings, blank as death.
Beside the first pool, near the wood,
A dead tree in set horror stood,
Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood;
Since thunder-stricken, years ago,
Fixed in the spectral strain and throe
Wherewith it struggled from the blow:
A monumental tree, alone,
That will not bend in storms, nor groan,
But break off sudden like a stone.
Its lifeless shadow lies oblique
Upon the pool where, javelin-like,
The star-rays quiver while they strike.