And fills thy strong, strange Thyme by fits

With awful utterings;



156 THE VOICE IN THE WILD OAK

Then times there are when all the words

Are like the sentences of one
Shut in by fate from wind and birds

And light of stars and sun !
No dazzling dryad, but a dark

Dream-haunted spirit doomed to be
Imprisonedj crampt in bands of bark,

For all eternity.
Yea, like the speech of one aghast

At Immortality in chainSj
What time the lordly storm rides past

With flames and arrowy rains :
Some wan Tithonus of the wood,

White with immeasurable years —
An awful ghost in solitude

With moaning moors and meres !

And when high thunder smites the hiU

And hunts the wild dog to his den^
Thy cries, like maledictions, shrill

And shriek from glen to glen,
As if a frightful memory whipped

Thy soul for some infernal crime
That left it blasted, blind, and stript —

A dread to Death and Time !

But when the fair-haired August dies,
And flowers wax strong and beautiful^

Thy songs are stately harmonies
By wood-lights green and cool —



THE VOICE IN THE WILD OAK 157

Most like the voice of one who shows
Through sufferings fierce, in fine reUef<

A noble patience arid repose —
A dignity in grief.
But, ah! conceptions fade away.
And still the life that lives in thee —
The soul of thy majestic lay —

Remains a mystery !
And he must speak the speech divine —

The language of the high-throned lords —
Who 'd give that grand old theme of thine

Its sense in faultless words.
By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,

With ruin of the fourfold gale,
Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh.
