He is a tower unleaning. But how he?ll break 
If Heaven assault him with full wind and sleet, 
And what uproar tall trees concumbent make! 


More than a hundred years and a hundred feet 
Naked he rears against cold skies eruptive, 
Only his temporal twigs unsure of seat, 


And the frail leaves of a season, who are susceptive 
To the mad humors of wind, and turn and flee 
In panic round the stem on which they are captive. 


Now a certain heart, too young and mortally 
Yoked with an unbeliever of bantering brood, 
Observed, as an eminent witness of life, the tree; 


She exulted, wrapped in a phantasy of good: 
?Be the great oak for his long winterings 
Our symbol of love, better than summer?s brood!? 


Then the patient oak, delivered of his pangs, 
Put forth profuse his green banners of peace 
And testified to her with innumerable tongues. 


And what but she fetch me up to the steep place 
Where the oak vaunted? A flat where birdsong flew 
Had to be traversed, and a quick populace 


Of daisies and yellow kinds, and here she knew, 
Instructed well by much mortality, 
Better than brag in this distraught purlieu. 


Above their pied and dusty clumps was he 
Standing, sheer on his hill, not much soiled over 
By the knobs and broken boughs of an old tree. 


She looked and murmured, ?Established there, forever!? 
But, that her pitiful error be undone, 
I knocked upon his house, a sorrowing lover, 


And like a funeral came the hollow tone. 
?The grand old fellow,? I grieved, ?holds gallantly, 
But before our joy has lapsed, even, will be gone.? 


I beat more sternly, and the dolorous cry 
Boomed till its loud reverberance outsounded 
The singing of bees; or the coward birds that fly 


Otherwhere with their songs when summer is sped, 
And if they stayed would perish miserably; 
Or the weeping girl remembering her dread.