UPON the lonely, wind-swept crest,
Where the hill-summit fronts the west,
Set like gaunt sentinels in row
To watch the seasons come and go,
In stalwart and unbending lines,
There stands a row of hoary pines.
Long have they stood, and much have seen,
Deer couched once in their coverts green,
The Indian paused his bow to string,
The wild cat crouched before its spring,
And from deep hollows far below
The wolf’s long howl rang o’er the snow.
Sleek kine and browsing sheep now stray
Where once was heard the wolves’ wild bay,
The red man fading slow made place
For an encroaching, stronger race,
And on the once lonely, rocky height
A church uprears its steeple white.
Scorning such human accidents,
Broadening their green circumference,
Each year made taller, statelier still,
The pine trees topped the wind-swept hill,
And surged responsive melodies
Like simulated sounds of seas.
Till yesterday their century long
Companionship held firm and strong,
Then a wild bolt of lightning sped
And smote their leader’s lofty head,
Plunging a ghastly deep-scarred line
Down the brown trunk of the old pine.
Still does he rear his head on high,
Still stanchly fronts the sun and sky,
Still do his needles in soft tunes
Make sea songs for the summer moons,
Veiling the deadly wound and blight;
But all the same he died last night.
For a brief space his stricken form
May bide the buffet of the storm,
While the deep rift within his heart
Widens and tears his trunk apart,
Then, with a crash from overhead,
He falls, and all men know him dead.
Ah, gallant heart, so firm to bear,
So resolute to face despair,
Hiding the grievous hurt away
Which saps thy being day by day,
And simulating with hard strife
The bearing and the look of life.
Patience is strong, and strong is faith,
But mightier still the power of death;
Thy flesh is weaker than thy pain,
Vain is the struggle, all in vain.
Heaven’s bolt of doom was surely sped,
And even to-day we count thee dead.