Classic Poem

I walked in the field one autumn day,
And came where an oak-tree stood
And talked with the winds of an elder day,
And of nature's brotherhood.

I sat me down by its ancient bole,
And mused till, in half-dream,
The real seemed fancy to my soul,
And fancies real did seem.

I noted where an acorn lay:
The flecked sunbeams fell through,
And the rain dripped on it day by day
The warm, long summer through.

The leaves and dust half-covered o'er
The burst and blackened shell:
I thought, " The dead arise no more:
They perish where they fell. "

A gust then shook the leafy top
Of the tree above my head,
And a shower of acorns fair did drop
Where the brother mast lay dead.

And I heard a whisper as if they spoke, —
Or was it the west wind's sigh? —
" O acorn child of the long-lived oak!
'Tis pity that you should die.

" The beauty of your fair round form
Is broken and blackened now:
No more you'll dare the joy of the storm,
Nor swing on your sunlit bough.

" Oh, might one forever an acorn stay
In the beauty of smooth, round shell,
And rock in the sunshine every day,
The universe were well! "

While thus the soughing voice wailed by
With a moan as of falling tears,
The dead climbed up in the sunlit sky
To a life of a hundred years.