Classic Poem

The crashing Tree, the merry call
Of woodmen in the frosty air,
The voices of the drovers clear,
And ringing axes here and there,
These occupy the lonely ground,
And scatter Human life around.

No more that charming solitude
Where swinging branches roar and sigh,
For level is the Church-like wood,
Its spires no longer pierce the sky,
The partridge and the red deer fled,
Where treads the swain, and creaks the sled.

The oak shall never shed again
That fawn-like Harvest in the fall,
Nor acorns in the Autumn rain,
From its deep clefts the squirrels call,
But far away it rolleth free,
And soon is planted in the sea.

And when the frowning Tempest drives
Those pinioned planks like dry leaves down,
And when the billows wildly rage,
And Men by death are quickly sown,
'T is Autumn in the ocean's tide,
And men to Acorns are allied.