The Fall of the Oak

A glorious tree is the old gray oak:
He has stood for a thousand years.
Has stood and frown'd
On the trees around,
Like a king among his peers;
As round their king they stand, so now,
When the flowers their pale leaves fold,.
The tall trees round him stand, array'd
In their robes of purple and gold.
He has stood like a tower
Through sun and shower,
And dared the winds to tattle;
He has heard the hail,
As from plates of mail,
From his own limbs shaken, rattle;
He has toss'd them about, and shorn the tops
(When the storm had roused his might)
Of the forest trees, as a strong man doth
The heads of his foes in fight.
The autumn sun looks kindly down,
But the frost is on the lea,
And sprinkles the horn
Of the owl at morn,
As she hies to the old oak tree.
Not a leaf is stirr'd;
Not a sound is heard
But the thump of the thresher's flail,
The low wind's sigh,
Or the distant cry
Of the hound on the fox's trail.
The forester he has whistling plunged
With his axe, in the deep wood's gloom,
That shrouds the hill,
Where few and chill
The sunbeams struggling come:
His brawny arm he has bared, and laid
His axe at the root of the tree,
The gray old oak,
And, with lusty stroke,
He wields it merrily: —
With lusty stroke, —
And the old gray oak,
Through the folds of his gorgeous vest
You may see him shake,
And the night-owl break
From her perch in his leafy crest.
She will come but to find him gone from where
He stood at the break of day;
Like a cloud that peals as it melts to air,
He has pass'd, with a crash, away.
Though the spring in the bloom and the frost in gold
No more his limbs attire,
On the stormy wave
He shall' float, and brave
The blast and the battle-fire!
Shall spread his white wings to the wind,'
And thunder on the deep,
As he thunder'd when
His bough was green,
On the high and stormy steep.