Classic Poem

The wind had caught the elm at last.
He'd lain all night and wondered how
'Twas bearing up against the blast:
And it was down for ever now,
Snapped like a match-stick. He at dawn
Had risen from his sleepless bed
And, hobbling to the window, drawn
The blind up and had seen, instead
Of that brave tree against the sky,
Thrust up into the windless blue
A broken stump not ten feet high. ...

And it was changed, the world he knew,
The world he'd known since he, tiptoe.
Had first looked out beneath the eaves
And seen that tree at dawn aglow,
Soaring with all its countless leaves
In their first glory of fresh green
Like a big flame above the mead.
How many mornings he had seen
It soaring since — well it would need
A better head to figure out
Than his, now he was seventy-five
And failing fast without a doubt —
The last of fifteen left alive
That in that very room were born,
Ay, and upon that very bed
He'd left at daybreak.
Many a morn
He'd seen it stark against the red
Of winter sunrise, or in spring —
Some April morning, dewy clear,
With all its green leaves glittering
In the first sunbeams, soaring sheer
Out of low mist.
The morn he wed
It seemed with glistening jewels hung. ...
And, fifty-year, his wife was dead —
And she so merry-eyed and young. ...

And it was black the night she died,
Dead-black against the starry sky,
When he had flung the window wide
Upon the night so crazily,
Instead of drawing down the blind
As he had meant. He was so dazed
And fumbled so, he couldn't find
The hasp to pull it to, though crazed
To shut them out — that starry night
And that great funeral-plume of black,
So awful in the cold starlight.
He'd fumbled till they drew him back
And closed it for him. ...
And for long
At night he could not bear to see
An elm against the stars.
'Twas wrong,
He knew, to blame the innocent tree —
Though some folk hated elms and thought
Them evil, for their great boughs fell
So suddenly. ...
George Stubbs was caught
And crushed to death. You couldn't tell
What brought that great bough crashing there
Just where George sat — his cider-keg
Raised to his lips — for all the air
Was still as death. ... And just one leg
Stuck silly-like out of the leaves,
When Seth waked up ten yards away
Where he'd been snoozing 'mid the sheaves.

'Twas queer-like, but you couldn't say
The tree itself had been to blame.
That bough was rotten through and through,
And would have fallen just the same
Though George had not been there. ...
'Twas true
That undertakers mostly made
Cheap coffins out of elm. ...
But he,
Well, he could never feel afraid
Of any living thing. That tree,
He'd seemed to hate it for a time
After she died. ... And yet somehow
You can't keep hating without rhyme
Or reason any live thing.
Now
He grieved to see it fallen low,
With almost every branch and bough
Smashed into splinters. All that snow,
A dead weight, and that heavy blast
Had dragged it down; and at his feet
It lay, the mighty tree, at last.

And he could make its trunk his seat
And rest awhile this winter's noon
In the warm sunshine: he could just
Hobble so far: and very soon
He'd lie as low himself. He'd trust
His body to that wood.
Old tree,
So proud and brave this many a year,
Now brought so low!
Ah! there was he,
His grandson Jo, with never a fear
Riding a bough unbroken yet —
A madcap like his father, Jim!
He'd teach him sense if he could get
Behind him with a stick, the limb!