The Oak and the Willow.
When the sun’s dazzling brightness oppresses the day,
How delightful to ramble the forests among!
And thro’ the arched boughs hung with woodbine so gay,
To view the rich landscape, to hear the sweet song!
And lo! where the charms of the wild woodland vale,
Expanding in beauty, enrapture the sight;
Here the woods in dark majesty wave in the gale,
There the lawns and the hills are all blazing in light.
From yonder high rocks, down the foaming stream rushes,
Then gleams thro’ the valley o’ershadowed with trees,
While the songsters of spring, warbling wild from the bushes,
With exquisite melody charm the faint breeze.
The peasant boy now with his cattle descends,
Winding slow to the brook down the mountain’s steep tide;
Where the larch o’er the precipice mournfully bends,
And the mountain-ash waves in luxuriance beside.
And mark yonder oak—’tis the cliff’s nodding crest,
That spreads its wide branches and towers sublime;
The morning’s first glances alight on its breast,
And evening there spends the last glimpse of her time.
But hark! the storm bursts, and the raging winds sweep—
See the lightning’s swift flash strikes its branches all bare!
E’en the leaves, where the sunbeams delighted to sleep,
Are scorched in the blaze, and are whirled thro’ the air.
Yet the shrubs in the vale closely sheltered from harm,
Untouched by the tempest, scarce whisper a sound;
While the mountains reecho the thunder’s alarm,
The winds are restrained by the rock’s massy bound.
Thus the rich and the great who engross fortune’s smiles,
Feel the rankling of care often torture their rest,
While peace all the toils of the peasant beguiles,
Or hope’s higher raptures awake in his breast.
Then mine be the lot of the willow that weeps,
Unseen in the glen o’er the smooth flowing rill,
’Mongst whose pensile branches the flow’ret creeps,
And the strains of the night-bird the ear sweetly thrill.