Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
The Old Oak-Tree at Hatfield Broadoak
By Frederick Locker-Lampson (18211895)A
Lamented when the giant died,
For England loves her trees:
What misty legends round him cling!
How lavishly he once did fling
His acorns to the breeze!
To give the district half its name,
The fiat could not hinder;
Last spring he put forth one green bough,—
The red leaves hang there still,—but now
His very props are tinder.
Long centuries his branches waved
A welcome to the blast:
An oak of broadest girth he grew,
And woodman never dared to do
What time has done at last.
And wolves, ere wolves were hunted down,
Found shelter at his foot;
Unnumbered squirrels gambolled free,
Glad music filled the gallant tree
From stem to topmost shoot.
Of when he first peered forth a frail
Petitioner for dew;
He took no ill from Saxon spade,
The rabbit spared the tender blade,
And valiantly he grew,
When Saint Augustine came and found
Us very proper Vandals;
When nymphs owned bluer eyes than hose,
When England measured men by blows,
And measured time by candles.
Ere Richard led the first crusade,
And maidens led the dance
Where, boy and man, in summer time,
Sweet Chaucer pondered o’er his rhyme;
And Robin Hood, perchance,
(And if they did not come, one can
At any rate suppose it);
They met beneath the mistletoe,—
We did the same, and ought to know
The reason why they chose it.
Stern Warwick hung six yeomen stanch
Along its mighty fork;
Uncivil wars for them! The fair
Red rose and white still bloom,—but where
Are Lancaster and York?
He saw that bold man beard the Pope;
In persecution’s reign
He mourned our martyrs at the stake,
And sent his kin to sea with Drake,
When Tudor humbled Spain.
His heart to screen the merry king,
Or countenance his scandals;
Then men were measured by their wit,
And then the mimic statesmen lit
At either end their candles.
They gave his poor old arms a crutch;
And thrice four maids and men ate
A meal within his rugged bark,
When Coventry bewitched the park,
And Chatham swayed the senate.
And dappled sunbeams danced between,
Upon the dappled deer,
When, clad in black, a pair were met
To read the Waterloo Gazette,—
They mourned their darling here.
Lies prone,—discoursing of the past,
Some fancy-dreams awaking,
Resigned, though headlong changes come,
Though nations arm to tuck of drum,
And dynasties are quaking.
Of eld tradition sanctified;
My pensive vigil keeping,
I feel thy beauty like a spell,
And thoughts, and tender thoughts, upwell,
That fill my heart to weeping.