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"The minx shall, for your folly's sake,

Still prove herself a shrew, Shall make your scribbling fingers ache,

And pinch your noses blue."

YARDLEY OAK.*

1791.

SURVIVOR Sǝle, and hardly such, of all

That once lived here, thy brethren! at my birth,
(Since which I number threescore winters past),
A shatter'd veteran, hollow-trunk'd 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,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
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 mellow'd the soil
Design'd 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!

*Yardley oak stood in Yardley Chase.

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, pair'd 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 trees 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 shelter'd 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 push'd
Of treeship-first a seedling hid in grass:

Then twig; then sapling; and, as century roll'd
Slow after century, a giant bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides emboss'd
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
Witness'd 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, e'en in her coarsest works,
Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force, that agitates not unimpair'd;
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
From almost nullity into a state

Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence,
Slow, into such magnificent decay.

Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been
When tempests could not. At thy firmest age
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
To the four-quarter'd winds, robust and bold,
Warped into tough knee-timber, many a load !*
But the axe spared thee. In those thriftier days
Oaks fell not, hewn by thousands, to supply
The bottomless demands of contest, waged
For senatorial honours. Thus to Time
The task was left to whittle thee away
With his sly scythe, whose ever-nibbling edge,
Noiseless, an atom and an atom more,
Disjoining from the rest, has, unobserved,
Achieved a labour, which had, far and wide,
By man perform'd, made all the forest ring.
Embowell'd now, and of thy ancient self
Possessing nought but the scoop'd rind, that seems
A huge throat calling to the clouds for drink,
Which it would give in rivulets to thy root,
Thou temptest none, but rather much forbid'st
The feller's toil, which thou couldst ill requite.
Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock,

A

quarry of stout spurs, and knotted fangs,
Which, crook'd into a thousand whimsies, clasp
The stubborn soil, and hold thee still erect.

So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet
Fails not in virtue, and in wisdom laid,
Though all the superstructure, by the tooth
Pulverised of venality, a shell

Stands now, and semblance only of itself!

* Knee-timber is found in the crooked arms of oak, which, by reason of their distortion,

are easily adjusted to the angle formed where the deck and the ship's sides meet.-C.

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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;
And some memorial none where once they grew.
Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even where death predominates. The spring
Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received
Half a millennium since the date of thine.

But since, although well qualified by age.
To teach, no spirit dwells in thee, nor voice
May be expected from thee, seated here
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, save the scene, I will perform
Myself the oracle, and will discourse
In my own ear such matter as I may.

One man alone, the father of us all,
Drew not his life from woman; never gazed,
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw,
On all around him; learn'd not by degrees,
Nor owed articulation to his ear;
But, moulded by his Maker into man
At once, upstood intelligent, survey'd
All creatures, with precision understood
Their purport, uses, properties, assign'd
To each his name significant, and, fill'd

With love and wisdom, render'd back to Heaven
In praise harmonious the first air he drew.
He was excused the penalties of dull

Minority. No tutor charged his hand

With the thought-tracing quill, or task'd his mind
With problems. History, not wanted yet,

Lean'd on her elbow, watching Time, whose course,
Eventful, should supply her with a theme. .

EPITAPH ON MRS. M. HIGGINS, OF WESTON.
LAURELS may flourish round the conqueror's tomb,
But happiest they who win the world to come :
Believers have a silent field to fight,

And their exploits are veil'd from human sight.
They in some nook, where little known they dwell,
Kneel, pray in faith, and rout the hosts of hell;
Eternal triumphs crown their toils divine,
And all those triumphs, Mary, now are thine.

SONNET TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER BIRTHDAY.

DEEM not, sweet rose, that bloom'st 'midst many a thorn,
Thy friend, though to a cloister's shade consign'd,
Can e'er forget the charms he left behind,
Or pass unheeded this auspicious morn!
In happier days to brighter prospects born,
Oh tell thy thoughtless sex, the virtuous mind,
Like thee, Content in every state may find,
And look on Folly's pageantry with scorn;
To steer with nicest art betwixt the extreme
Of idle mirth, and affectation coy;

To blend good sense with elegance and ease;
To bid Affliction's eye no longer stream ;
Is thine; best gift, the unfailing source of joy,
The guide to pleasures which can never cease!

THE RETIRED CAT.
[1791.]

A POET's cat, sedate and grave
As poet well could wish to have,
Was much addicted to inquire
For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick,-
Nature perhaps herself had cast her
In such a mould philosophique,

'Or else she learn'd it of her master.
Sometimes ascending debonnair,
An apple tree or lofty pear,
Lodged with convenience in the fork,
She watched the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty watering-pot,
There, wanting nothing, save a fan,
To seem some nymph in her sedan
Apparell'd in exactest sort,

And ready to be borne to court.

* His own cat. Cowper had many pets. Lady Hesketh enumerates five rabbits, three hares, two guinea-pigs, a magpie, a jay, a starling, two goldfinches, two canaries, and two dogs.

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