Then from the giddy deep she madly springs,
Grasping her maiden robes, that vainly kept
Panting abroad, like unavailing wings,

To save her from her death. The sea-maid wept, And in a crystal cave her corse enshrined;

No meaner sepulchre should Hero find!

THE ELM TREE:

A DREAM IN THE WOODS.

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees."

AS YOU LIKE IT.

TWAS in a shady avenue,
Where lofty elms abound
And from a tree

There came to me

A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmured overhead,
And sometimes underground.

Amongst the leaves it seemed to sigh, Amid the boughs to moan;

It muttered in the stem, and then

The roots took up the tone; As if beneath the dewy grass The dead began to groan.

No breeze there was to stir the leaves;
No bolts that tempests launch,
To rend the trunk or rugged bark;
No gale to bend the branch;

No quake of earth to heave the roots,

That stood so stiff and stanch.

(82)

No bird was preening up aloft,
To rustle with its wing;

No squirrel, in its sport or fear,
From bough to bough to spring;
The solid bole

Had ne'er a hole

To hide a living thing!

No scooping hollow cell to lodge
A furtive beast or fowl,

The martin, bat,

Or forest cat

That nightly loves to prowl,
Nor ivy nook so apt to shroud
The moping, snoring owl.

But still the sound was in my ear,
A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmured overhead,

And sometimes underground

"Twas in a shady avenue

Where lofty elms abound.

O, hath the Dryad still a tongue
In this ungenial clime?
Have sylvan spirits still a voice
As in the classic prime-
To make the forest voluble,
As in the olden time?

The olden time is dead and gone;
Its years have filled their sum
And even in Greece - her native Greece -
The sylvan nymph is dumb —

From ash, and beech, and aged oak,

No classic whispers come.

From poplar, pine, and drooping birch,
And fragrant linden trees,
No living sound

E'er hovers round,

'Unless the vagrant breeze, The music of the merry bird, Or hum of busy bees.

But busy bees forsake the elm
That bears no bloom aloft -
The finch was in the hawthorn-bush,

The blackbird in the croft;
And among the firs the brooding dove,
That else might murmur soft.

Yet still I heard that solemn sound,
And sad it was to boot,
From every overhanging bough,

And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,
And from the twisted root.

From these, -a melancholy moan;

From those, a dreary sigh;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,

And wild winds sweeping by-
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud
Was steadfast in the sky.

No sign or touch of stirring air

Could either sense observeThe zephyr had not breath enough

The thistle-down to swerve,

Or force the filmy gossamers

To take another curve.

In still and silent slumber hushed

All Nature seemed to be:

From heaven above, or earth beneath,
No whisper came to me→
Except the solemn sound and sad

From that MYSTERIOUS TREE!

A hollow, hollow, hollow sound,
As is that dreamy roar

When distant billows boil and bound
Along a shingly shore —

But the ocean brim was far aloof,
A hundred miles or more.

No murmur of the gusty sea,
No tumult of the beach,
However they may foam and fret,

The bounded sense could reachMethought the trees in mystic tongue Were talking each to each!

Mayhap, rehearsing ancient tales
Of greenwood love or guilt,
Of whispered vows

Beneath their boughs;

Or blood obscurely spilt ;

Or of that near-hand mansion-house
A royal Tudor built.