Classic Poem

Thou art alone, my sister? Dost thou guess
The meaning of such loneliness as thine?
It is as if there towered a lofty pine
Amid a vast and tangled wilderness
Of lesser growth. Aloft 'mid strain and stress
Of weather doth rear its tapering, fine,
And haughty peak. How should, without some sign,
The shrubs below suspect its loneliness?
How should they dream of pangs to them unknown
That rend in growth each gently swaying limb?
And how conceive the strange, insistent moan
Of winds that stir such lofty branches dim?
Earthward they look; while full of mystery
And skyward pointing, towers the lofty tree.

But comes there not a time in which the wind
Murmurs all gently, for the pine-tree's own
And ravished hearing? When for it alone
The clouds their splendid, fleecy locks unbind
And spread them out in air? And though they find
It ever soaring, while the world lies prone,
'Tis as the monarch is upon his throne,
His solitary griefs with joys combined. —
Alone with winds and clouds, the lesser mould
May not attain thy height; but thou o'er them
Canst bend and whisper. O thou mighty-souled,
Tell them of winds and clouds. Offer thy stem
If they would climb; and find it good to be
That which thou art, O solitary tree.