Complete Poetical Works

ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES

     (SEQUOIA GIGANTEA)

     Brown foundling of the Western wood,
       Babe of primeval wildernesses!
     Long on my table thou hast stood
       Encounters strange and rude caresses;
     Perchance contented with thy lot,
       Surroundings new, and curious faces,
     As though ten centuries were not
       Imprisoned in thy shining cases.

     Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
       Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
     The journey lapped in autumn haze,
       The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
     The morning ride, the noonday halt,
       The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
     And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
       With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

     Once more I see the rocking masts
       That scrape the sky, their only tenant
     The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
       From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
     I see the Indian files that keep
       Their places in the dusty heather,
     Their red trunks standing ankle-deep
       In moccasins of rusty leather.

     I see all this, and marvel much
       That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able
     To keep the company of such
       As throng thy friend's—the poet's—table:
     The latest spawn the press hath cast,—
       The "modern popes," "the later Byrons,"—
     Why, e'en the best may not outlast
       Thy poor relation—Sempervirens.

     Thy sire saw the light that shone
       On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
     On many a royal gilded throne
       And deed forgotten in the present;
     He saw the age of sacred trees
       And Druid groves and mystic larches;
     And saw from forest domes like these
       The builder bring his Gothic arches.

     And must thou, foundling, still forego
       Thy heritage and high ambition,
     To lie full lowly and full low,
       Adjusted to thy new condition?
     Not hidden in the drifted snows,
       But under ink-drops idly spattered,
     And leaves ephemeral as those
       That on thy woodland tomb were scattered?

     Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak
       The moral of thy simple story:
     Though life is all that thou dost seek,
       And age alone thy crown of glory,
     Not thine the only germs that fail
       The purpose of their high creation,
     If their poor tenements avail
       For worldly show and ostentation.