But one, although her smile was sweet,
Frowned oftener than she smiled.

And in her humour, when she frowned,
Would raise her voice, and roar,
And shake with fury to the ground,

The garland that she wore.

The other was of gentler cast,

From all such frenzy clear,

Her frowns were seldom known to last,

And never proved severe.

To poets of renown in song

The Nymphs referred the cause,

Who, strange to tell, all judged it wrong,
And gave misplaced applause.

They gentle called, and kind and soft,
The flippant and the scold,

And though she changed her mood so oft,
That failing left untold.

No judges, sure, were e'er so mad,

Or so resolved to err

In short, the charms her sister had
They lavished all on her.

Then thus the god whom fondly they
Their great inspirer call,

Was heard, one genial summer's day,
To reprimand them all.

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15

20

25

30

"Since thus ye have combined," he said,

My favourite Nymph to slight,

"Adorning May, that peevish maid,
"With June's undoubted right,

"The minx shall, for your folly's sake,
"Still prove herself a shrew,

"Shall make your scribbling fingers ache,
"And pinch your noses blue."

35

40

YARDLEY OAK.*

URVIVOR 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

* Hayley, 1803, vol. 111. p. 409.

5

10

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,

15

21

25

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 30
Of argument, employed too oft amiss,

Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!

Thou fellest 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

34

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,

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45

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;

50

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 flock
That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe sheltered from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived

Thy popularity, and art become

(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 hulk

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—

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60

65

70

75

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, 80
Fine passing thought, e'en 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
From almost nullity into a state

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

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90

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 ribbed the sides and planked the

deck

95

Of some flagged admiral; and tortuous arms,
The shipwright's darling treasure, didst present
To the four-quartered 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, 105

101

* 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.