Thou fell'st mature; and, in the loamy clod Swelling with vegetative force instinct,

Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled twins, Now stars; two lobes, protruding, pair'd exact; A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth

Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig.
Who lived when thou wast such?

thou speak,

As in Dodona once thy kindred trees
Oracular, I would not curious ask

Oh, could'st

The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.

By thee I might correct, erroneous oft,
The clock of history, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recovering, and misstated setting right————
Desperate attempt, till trees shall speak again!
Time made thee what thou wast, king of the

woods;

And time hath made thee what thou art-a cave
For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs
O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe shelter'd from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now.

Thy popularity, and art become

Thou hast outlived

(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing

Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.

While thus through all the stages thou hast push'd

Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then sapling; and, as century roll'd Slow after century, a giant bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root Upheaved above the soil, and sides emboss'd With prominent wens globose-till at the last The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world
Witness'd of mutability in all

That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them. Skies uncertain now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds
Calm and alternate storm, moisture, and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

And in conclusion mar them.

Nature's threads,

Fine passing thought, e'en in their coarsest works,

Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force that agitates not unimpair'd;

But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.

Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almost nullity into a state

Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence,
Slow, into such magnificent decay.

Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been
At thy firmest age

When tempests could not.

Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents

That might have ribb'd the sides and plank'd the deck

Of some flagg'd admiral; and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four-quarter'd winds, robust and bold,
Warp'd into tough knee-timber, many a load!*
But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply
The bottomless demands of contest waged
For senatorial honours. Thus to time
The task was left to whittle thee away
With his sly sithe, whose ever-nibbling edge,
Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more,
Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserved,
Achieved a labour which had, far and wide,
By man perform'd, made all the forest ring.
Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self
Possessing nought but the scoop'd rind, that seems
A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root,
Thou temptest none, but rather much forbidd'st
The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite.
Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock,

* Knee-timber is found in the crooked arms of oak, which, by reason of their distortion, are easily adjusted to the angle formed where the deck and the ship's sides meet.

ANOTHER,

For a stone erected on a similar occasion at the same place in the following year.

READER! behold a monument
That asks no sigh or tear,
Though it perpetuate the event
Of a great burial here.

June, 1790.

Anno 1791.

TO MRS. KING,

On her kind present to the author, a patchwork counterpane of her own making.

THE bard, if e'er he feel at all,
Must sure be quicken'd by a call
Both on his heart and head,
To pay with tuneful thanks the care
And kindness of a lady fair,

Who deigns to deck his bed.

A bed like this, in ancient time,
On Ida's barren top sublime,

(As Homer's epic shows)

Composed of sweetest vernal flowers,
Without the aid of sun or showers,

For Jove and Juno rose.

Less beautiful, however gay,

Is that which in the scorching day
Receives the weary swain,

Who, laying his long sithe aside, ·
Sleeps on some bank with daisies pied,
Till roused to toil again.

What labours of the loom I see!
Looms numberless have groan'd for me!
Should every maiden come

To scramble for the patch that bears
The impress of the robe she wears,
The bell would toll for some.

And oh, what havoc would ensue !
This bright display of every hue
All in a moment fled!

As if a storm should strip the bowers
Of all their tendrils, leaves, and flowers-
Each pocketing a shred.

Thanks then to every gentle fair
Who will not come to peck me bare

As bird of borrow'd feather,

And thanks to one above them all, The gentle fair of Pertenhall, Who put the whole together. August, 1790.

YOL. VII.

Y