A. E. Housman
THE SPIRIT OF THE BIRCH
I am the dancer of the wood
I shimmer in the solitude
Men call me Birch Tree, yet I know
In other days it was not so.
I am a Dryad slim and white
Who danced too long one summer night,
And the Dawn found and prisoned me!
Captive I moaned my liberty.
But let the wood wind flutes begin
Their elfin music, faint and thin,
I sway, I bend, retreat, advance,
And evermore—I dance! I dance!
Arthur Ketchum
FAMILY TREES
You boast about your ancient line,
But listen, stranger, unto mine:
You trace your lineage afar,
Back to the heroes of a war
Fought that a country might be free;
Yea, farther—to a stormy sea
Where winter's angry billows tossed,
O'er which your Pilgrim Fathers crossed.
Nay, more—through yellow, dusty tomes
You trace your name to English homes
Before the distant, unknown West
Lay open to a world's behest;
Yea, back to days of those Crusades
When Turk and Christian crossed their blades,
You point with pride to ancient names,
To powdered sires and painted dames;
You boast of this—your family tree;
Now listen, stranger, unto me:
When armored knights and gallant squires,
Your own belovèd, honored sires,
Were in their infants' blankets rolled,
My fathers' youngest sons were old;
When they broke forth in infant tears
My fathers' heads were crowned with years,
Yea, ere the mighty Saxon host
Of which you sing had touched the coast,
Looked back as far as you look now.
Yea, when the Druids trod the wood,
My venerable fathers stood
And gazed through misty centuries
As far as even Memory sees.
When Britain's eldest first beheld
The light, my fathers then were eld.
You of the splendid ancestry,
Who boast about your family tree,
Consider, stranger, this of mine—
Bethink the lineage of a Pine.
Douglas Malloch