tree

Klabumm! - So krieg die Schwerenot! -
Der Nachbar schießt die Spatzen tot.

Klaboom! - Enough to lose one's head! -
The neighbour's shooting sparrows dead.


Doch immerhin und einerlei!
Ein Flintenschuß ist schnell vorbei.

But, anyhow and all the same!
The shooting's over. Knoll takes aim.



Schon wieder wühlt das Ungetier.
Wart! denkt sich Knoll. Jetzt kommen wir.

The monster's burrowing once more.
This is what Knoll's been waiting for.

The mind, with its own eyes and ears,
May for these others have no care;
No matter where this body is,
The mind is free to go elsewhere.
My mind can be a sailor, when
This body's still confined to land;
And turn these mortals into trees,
That walk in Fleet Street or the Strand.

So, when I'm passing Charing Cross,
Where porters work both night and day,
I ofttimes hear sweet Malpas Brook,
That flows thrice fifty miles away.
And when I'm passing near St Paul's

Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas nothing but the thrumming
Of a wood-pecker a-rapping on the hollow of a tree;
And she thought that I was fooling when I said it was the drumming
Of the mustering of legions, and 'twas calling unto me;
'Twas calling me to pull my freight and hop across the sea.

And a-mending of my fish-nets sure I started up in wonder,
For I heard a savage roaring and 'twas coming from afar;
Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas only summer thunder,

Argument. -- The Indian Government being minded to discover the economic condition of their lands, sent a Committee to inquire into it; and saw that it was good.


Scene. -- The wooded heights of Simla. The Incarnation of the Government of India in the raiment of the Angel of Plenty signs, to pianoforte accompaniment: --

"How sweet is the shepherd's sweet life!
From the dawn to the even he strays --
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.
(adagio dim.) Filled with praise!"

After so long an absence
At last we meet agin:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
And but few of us linger now,
Like the prophets two or three berries
In the top of the uppermost bough.

We cordially greet each other
In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas
And many a Happy New Year;
But each in his heart is thinking

The Maple with its tassell flowers of green
That turns to red, a stag horn shapèd seed
Just spreading out its scallopped leaves is seen,
Of yellowish hue yet beautifully green.
Bark ribb'd like corderoy in seamy screed
That farther up the stem is smoother seen,
Where the white hemlock with white umbel flowers
Up each spread stoven to the branches towers
And mossy round the stoven spread dark green
And blotched leaved orchis and the blue-bell flowers -
Thickly they grow and neath the leaves are seen.

Wind of the gentle summer night,
Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
Then blow over to me.

Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,
You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
Out of the lilac tree,

Wind you must waver a gossamer sail
To ferry a scent so light,
Will you carry my love a message as frail
Through the hawk-haunted night?

For my heart is sometimes strange and wild,
Bitter and bold and free,

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

1

In a shoe box stuffed in an old nylon stocking
Sleeps the baby mouse I found in the meadow,
Where he trembled and shook beneath a stick
Till I caught him up by the tail and brought him in,
Cradled in my hand,
A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,
Wriggling like a minuscule puppy.

I.
If souls could sing to heaven's high King
As blackbirds pipe on earth,
How those delicious courts would ring
With gusts of lovely mirth!
What white-robed throng could lift a song
So mellow with righteous glee
As this brown bird that all day long
Delights my hawthorn tree.
Hark! That's the thrush
With speckled breast
From yon white bush
Chaunting his best,
Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!

II.
If earthly dreams be touched with gleams
Of Paradisal air,