XLVII.

“We be small foresters and gay, who tend
On trees, and all their furniture of green,
Training the young boughs airily to bend,
And show blue snatches of the sky between;—­
Or knit more close intricacies, to screen
Birds’ crafty dwellings, as may hide them best,
But most the timid blackbird’s—­she that, seen,
Will bear black poisonous berries to her nest,
Lest man should cage the darlings of her breast.”

XLVIII.

“We bend each tree in proper attitude,
And founting willows train in silvery falls;
We frame all shady roofs and arches rude,
And verdant aisles leading to Dryads’ halls,
Or deep recesses where the Echo calls;—­
We shape all plumy trees against the sky,
And carve tall elms’ Corinthian capitals,—­
When sometimes, as our tiny hatchets ply,
Men say, the tapping woodpecker is nigh.”

XLIX.

“Sometimes we scoop the squirrel’s hollow cell,
And sometimes carve quaint letters on trees’ rind,
That haply some lone musing wight may spell
Dainty Aminta,—­Gentle Rosalind,—­
Or chastest Laura,—­sweetly call’d to mind
In sylvan solitudes, ere he lies down;—­
And sometimes we enrich gray stems with twined
And vagrant ivy,—­or rich moss, whose brown
Burns into gold as the warm sun goes down.”

L.

“And, lastly, for mirth’s sake and Christmas cheer,
We bear the seedling berries, for increase,
To graft the Druid oaks, from year to year,
Careful that mistletoe may never cease;—­
Wherefore, if thou dost prize the shady peace
Of sombre forests, or to see light break
Through sylvan cloisters, and in spring release
Thy spirit amongst leaves from careful ake,
Spare us our lives for the Green Dryad’s sake.”

LI.

Then Saturn, with a frown:—­“Go forth, and fell
Oak for your coffins, and thenceforth lay by
Your axes for the rust, and bid farewell
To all sweet birds, and the blue peeps of sky
Through tangled branches, for ye shall not spy
The next green generation of the tree;
But hence with the dead leaves, whene’e they fly,—­
Which in the bleak air I would rather see,
Than flights of the most tuneful birds that be.”

LII.

“For I dislike all prime, and verdant pets,
Ivy except, that on the aged wall
Prays with its worm-like roots, and daily frets
The crumbled tower it seems to league withal,
King-like, worn down by its own coronal:—­
Neither in forest haunts love I to won,
Before the golden plumage ’gins to fall,
And leaves the brown bleak limbs with few leaves on,
Or bare—­like Nature in her skeleton.”