"Princess! if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, 'Tis because resentment ties

All the terrors of our tongues.

"Rome shall perish,-write that word
In the blood that she has spilt ;
Perish hopeless and abhorred,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.

"Rome, for empire far renowned, Tramples on a thousand states; Soon her pride shall kiss the ground,— Hark! the Gaul is at her gates.

"Other Romans shall arise,

Heedless of a soldier's name,

Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize,'
Harmony the path to fame.

"Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land,

66

Armed with thunder, clad with wings,

Shall a wider world command,

Regions Cæsar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they."

Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending as he swept the chords

Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow,

Rushed to battle, fought and died,
Dying, hurled them at the foe.

"Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due;
Empire is on us bestowed,

Shame and ruin wait for you."

YARDLEY OAK.

SURVIVOR sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren !—at my birth
(Since which I number threescore winters past)
A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps,
As now,
and with excoriate forks deform,

Relics of ages!—could a mind, imbued
With truth from Heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,

When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act

Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.

Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,

Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,

Q

Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs,
And all thine embryo vastness, at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellowed the soil
Designed thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,

Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!

Thou fell'st mature; and in the loamy clod
Swelling with vegetative force instinct

Didst burst thine egg, as theirs the fabled Twins, Now stars; two lobes, protruding, paired exact; A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth

Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig.

Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst 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,
The clock of history, facts and events
Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts
Recovering, and misstated setting right—
Desperate attempt, till tree shall speak again!

Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods, And Time hath made thee what thou art-a cave For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs

O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now.

Thy popularity, and art become

Thou hast outlived

(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing

Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.

While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed
Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass;
Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled
Slow after century, a giant-bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed
With prominent wens globose,―till at the last
The rottenness, which Time is charged to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world
Witnessed, of mutability in all

That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them.

Skies uncertain, now the heat

Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam

Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds,—
Calm and alternate storm, moisture and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,
Fine passing thought, even in her coarsest works,
Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force that agitates, not unimpaired;
But, worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.
Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth