WEST SHORE.
770
THE TALE OF THE FIR.
A tow'ring fir in Oregon .
Nodded in graceful majesty ;
Thrice three-score feet from earth its crest,
Its trunk by arms of ages pressed.
" Oh, monarch 1 prythee speak to me !
I fain would know thy history.
Are thy four hundred years most span?
What hast thou seen ? What hast thou done ? "
Alack a day 1 The world's gone wrong I
The woodman's ax makes dreary song,
The forest wild dismantling.
A sprightly shrub I grew, and strong,
Well favored past all in the copse
With dew-kissed, quiv'ring foliage.
A rover bold and aged, the nind,
Murmured me tales of amours seen
Twixt Roman ruler and Egypt's queen,
'Twixt courtly dames and British king,
Till drooped my tender shoots abashed,
For this thing called humanity.
When my rings counted half a score,
A cloud my god fere sailing by
Sighed tidings of a far-off land
Where wicked men were warring.
A Echeming, heartless, misshaped knave
Had murderously usurped a crown,
And headless trunks and broken hearts
were direful signs of shifting yoke.
Ah, me 1 Ah, me I 'Tis passing wise
Men do not flourish as the tree ;
That knaves come dust and kings
While shackling earth with misery.
Broad grew my shade, a soothing balm
To Btartled wild deer's panting breast ;
High reared my head. At eventide
The secrets of the stars I guessed
From their glintings and their glistenings
How pale face trailed our distant hearth,
And hamlets rose from smoking wolds,
And roaring arms, and blood-reaked earth,
And people died that others live.
Oh, selfish man 1 Far better 'twere
To fill the world with trees like me,
Who envy not, nor love, nor hate,
But simply live to beautify.
Broad grew my shade. My lofty form
Rifted the tempest's whirling blast.
O'er peaks I gazed, when, lol I saw
The breast of ocean cruelly torn
Tom by the prow of the looter's barque
Which held harnessed the fretting breeze.
Alack a day I The world's gone wrong I
Where dwells the peace that once has been?
The village lying on the plain,
Culled from the noblest of my kin,
Hives restless sprites who hew and delve,
And rob the earth of clothing green.
The mounts are razsd. The canyon's yawn
Is sealed by crafty hand of man ;
The dark of night has silence lost ;
Once tangled brakes, now fields of grain.
Oh, man is great I Amazed he stands
To view the work of ripened brain,
Then halts, falls in the gaping grave,
And starts as earth again.
The churchyard thrives; but in my aliado
Children prattle and lovers sigh.
- . . a I Iff- a liMlrAl
The night and morn oi mo n
In my invincibility.
am mi r mmsmiym . .
im 4 11 mmTmM-f No hour of Ufa as
Oh, boastful fir, thou, too, must die I
E'en now Time s clutching at tny neari.
yet thou hast known
man enjoys.
Anon thou'lt tremble,
totter, fall;
Thou, too, dost only
' play thy part.
C. J. M.