[Arboricide]
A word of grief to me erewhile:
We have cut the oak down, in our isle.
And I said: "Ye have bereaven
The song-thrush and the bee,
And the fisher-boy at sea
Of his sea-mark in the even;
And gourds of cooling shade, to lie
Within the sickle's sound;
And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye
Of sleep on duty's ground;
And poets of their tent
And quiet tenement.
Ah, impious! who so paid
Such fatherhood, and made
Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade."
For the hewn oak a century fair,
A wound in earth, an ache in air.
And I said: "No pillared height
With a summer daïs over,
Where a dryad fled her lover
Through the long arcade of light;
Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more,
Since the loud leaves are gone,
Between the shorn cliff and the shore,
Pan's organ antiphon.
Some nameless envy fed
This blow at grandeur's head:
Some breathed reproach, o'erdue,
Degenerate men, ye drew!
Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew."
[The Cherry Bough]
In a new poet's and a new friend's honour,
Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting,
Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome
Here in my garden,
Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses,
And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting,
One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries.
Oh, naught is absent,
Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison
Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity
Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels
Were once so plenty;
Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning,
How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you
I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden
With your rich verses!
Since, long ago, in other gentler weather,
Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it
(Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother
Glad with your gladness),
What has befallen in the world of wonder,
That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour,
And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty,
Are sapped and rotten?
Alas! When my young guests have done with singing,
I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory,
And hold it high among them, and say after:
"O my poor Ovid,
"Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember
For the clear time when we were boys together,
These tears at home are shed; and with you also
Your bough is dying."