(Since which I number threescore winters past,) It seems idolatry with some excuse Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine, Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste Thou wast a bauble once-a cup and ball, But Fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains The rudiments should sleep the winter through. So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can, Ye reas'ners broad awake, whose busy search Of argument, employ'd too oft amiss, Sifts half the pleasures of short life away! Thou fell'st mature; and in the loamy clod, Did burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, And, all the elements thy puny growth Fost'ring propitious, thou becam'st a twig. Who liv'd, when thou wast such? O, could'st thou speak, As in Dodona once thy kindred trees Oracular, I would not curious ask The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth, Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past. By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods; And Time hath made thee what thou art-a cave For owls to roost on. Once thy spreading boughs O'erhung the champaign; and the num'rous flocks Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing While thus through all the stages thou hast push'd Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then sapling; and, as cent'ry roll'd Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root What exhibitions various hath the world That we account most durable below! In all that live, plant, animal, and man, And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads, Fine passing thought e'en in her coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain The force that agitates, not unimpair'd ; Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence, Time was, when, settling on thy leaf, a fly Could shake thee to thy root-and time has been 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 But the axe spar'd thee. In those thriftier days Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands to supply Thus to Time The task was left to whittle thee away Noiseless, an atom, and an atom more, Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserv'd, Achiev'd a labour which had far and wide, Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self So stands a kingdom whose foundation yet. Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid, Though all the superstructure, by the tooth Pulverized of venality, a shell Stands now, and semblance only of itself! Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off Long since, and rovers of the forest wild, With bow and shaft, have burnt them. Some have left A splinter'd stump, bleach'd to a snowy white; Proof not contemptible of what she can, |