Stirred by its fall—poor destined bark of Dis!— Along my soul a bruit there is Of echoing images,
Reverberations of mortality: Spelt backward from its death, to me Its life reads saddenedly.
Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld; And boys, there creeping unbeheld, A laughing moment dwelled.
Yet they, within its very heart so crept, Reached not the heart that courage kept With winds and years beswept.
And in its boughs did close and kindly nest The birds, as they within its breast, By all its leaves caressed.
But bird nor child might touch by any art Each other's or the tree's hid heart, A whole God's breadth apart;
The breadth of God, the breadth of death and life! Even so, even so, in undreamed strife With pulseless Law, the wife,—
The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,— Their soul at grapple in mid-way, Sweet to her sweet may say:
"I take you to my inmost heart, my true!" Ah, fool! but there is one heart you Shall never take him to!
The hold that falls not when the town is got, The heart's heart, whose immurèd plot Hath keys yourself keep not!