With honeysuckle, over-sweet, festoon'd; With bitter ivy bound; Terraced with fungus unsound; Deform'd with many a boss And closed scar, o'er cushion'd deep with moss; Bunch'd all about with pagan mistletoe; And thick with nests of the hoarse bird That talks, but understands not his own word; Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago, A single tree. Thunder has done its worst among its twigs, Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned, But in its heart, alway Ready to push new verdurous boughs, whene'er The rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air, Is all antiquity and no decay. Rich, though rejected by forest-pigs, Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rind They that break it find Heart-succouring savour of each several meat, And kernell'd drink of brain-renewing power, With bitter condiment and sour, And sweet economy and sweet, And odours that remind Of haunts of childhood and a different day. Beside this tree, Praising no Gods nor blaming, sans a wish, Sits, Tartar-like, the Time's civility, And eats its dead-dog off a golden dish. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FAREWELL TO THE FARM by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON RING FROM THE RIM OF THE GLASS, BOYS by JOHN CLINTON ANTHONY UPON THE HILL BEFORE CENTREVILLE by GEORGE HENRY BOKER THE PRIDE OF WESTMORELAND by GORDON BOTTOMLEY |