The Forest Vine
It grew in the old wilderness—The vine
Is linked with thoughts of sunny Italy,
Or the fair hills of France, or the sweet vales
Where flows the Guadalquivir. But this grew
Where, as the sunlight look'd through lacing boughs,
The shadows of the stern, tall, primal wood
Fell round us, and across the silent flood,
That wash'd the deep ravine. The pauseless lapse
Of ages had beheld no change in all
The aspect of that scene; or but such change,
As Time himself had made; the slow decay
Of the old patriarch oaks, and as they fell
And moulder'd on the earth, the silent growth
Of the young sturdy stem, that rear'd itself
To stretch its branches in their former place.
The wild flower stretch'd its tender petals out,
Lending strange brightness to the forest gloom;
The fleet deer toss'd his antlers to the breeze,
Graceful and shy; and when the sun went down,
The tangled thicket rustled to the tread
Of the gaunt wolf—just as in former years.
But the red hunter was no longer there;
And the bright flowers were no more twined to deck
The brow of Indian maid.
We stood beside
A fallen oak; its aged limbs were spread
Prone to the earth, uptorn by the rude wind,
And perishing on the soil that once had fed
Their giant strength: clinging around its roots
And its decaying trunk, a grape-vine wreathed
Its fresh green foliage, draping the still grave
With its luxuriance—meet garniture
For such a sepulchre! a sepulchre most meet
To wrap the bones of the old forest race!
For we had checked our idle wanderings
To gaze upon the relics of the dead—
The dead of other ages! they who trod
When that fallen tree was fresh in its green prime,—
The earth that it now cumber'd; they who once
In savage freedom bounded through the wild,
And quaff'd the limpid spring, or shot along
The swift canoe upon yon rushing wave,
Or yell'd the fierce and horrid war whoop round,
Or gather'd to the council fire, or sprang
With proud firm step to mingle in the dance,
And vaunt of their own triumphs;—there they lie,
Brittle and time-blanch'd fragments! bones—dry bones!
Prison'd for lingering years beneath the sod,
And now that the strong wind hath torn away
[...] Read more
poem by Elizabeth Margaret Chandler from Poetical Works (1836)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
