Viewing page 149 of 309

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

264 ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

To peel the bark in curious rings,
And many a notch and ray,
To beat the air till it whizzing sings,
Then idly cast away.

HIs hand was stay'd; he knew not why:
'Twas a presence breathed around —
A pleading from the deep-blue sky,
And up from the teeming ground.
It told of the care that had lavish'd been
In sunshine and in dew —
Of the many things that had wrought a screen
When perin around it grew.

It told of the oak that once had bow'd,
A feeble a thing to see;
But now, when the storm is raging loud,
It wresteled mightily.
There's a deeper thought on the schoolboy's brow,
A new love at his heart,
And he ponders much, as with footsteps slow
He turns him to depart.

Up grew that twig, with a vigour bold,
In the shade of the parent tree,
And the old oak knew that his doom was told,
When the sapling sprang so free.
Then the fierce winds came, and they raging tore
The hollow limbs away;
And the damp moss crept from the earthly floor
Round the trunk, time-worn and gray.

The young oak grew, and proudly grew,
For its roots were deep and strong;
And a shadow broad on the earth it threw,
And the sunlight linger'd long

ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH. 265

On its glossy leaf, where the flickering light
Was flung to the evening sky;
And the wild bird came to its airy height,
And taught her young to fly.

In acorn-time came the truant boy,
With a wild and eager look,
And he mark'd the tree with a wondering joy,
As the wind the great limbs shook.
He look'd where the moss on the north side grew,
The gnarled arms outspread,
The solemn shadow the huge tree threw,
As it tower'd above his head:

And vague-like fears the boy surround,
In the shadow of that tree;
So growing up from the darksome ground;
Like a giant mystery.
His heart beats quick to the swuirrel's tread
On the withered leaf and dry,
And he lifts not up his awe-struck head
As the eddying wind sweeps by.

And regally the stout oak stood,
In its vigour and its pride;
A monarch own'd in the solemn wood,
With a sceptre spreading wide —
No more in the wintry blast to bow,
Or rock in the summer breeze;
But draped in green, or star-like snow,
Reigh king of the forest trees.

And a thousand years it firmly grew,
And a thousand blasts defied;
And, mighty in strength, its broad arms threw
A shadow dense and wide.
23