The Sighing of the Boehmer Wald

One morn I read the brief memorial lines,
Which told of a great forest's swift decay,
And how they stripp'd the bark from off the pines,
And strove to burn the beetle pest away.
That night the Sighing of the Boehmer Wald
Pass'd through my garden in the twilight gloom;
A mighty sigh, the herald of its doom,
For insect hosts move on, but never halt.
Sad was the dirge of those primeval trees,
Grown for a thousand years; nor seem'd it strange
That I, so jealous of the woodman's stroke,
So chary of the lives of pine and oak,
Should catch the sound of sylvan grief and change,
The forest's dying voice across the seas.