| |
| HE lives within the hollow wood, | |
| From one clear dell he seldom ranges; | |
| His daily toil in solitude | |
| Revolves, but never changes. | |
| |
| A still old man, with grizzled beard, | 5 |
| Grey eye, bent shape, and smoke-tann’d features, | |
| His quiet footstep is not fear’d | |
| By shyest woodland creatures. | |
| |
| I love to watch the pale blue spire | |
| His scented labour builds above it; | 10 |
| I track the woodland by his fire, | |
| And, seen afar, I love it. | |
| |
| It seems among the serious trees | |
| The emblem of a living pleasure, | |
| It animates the silences | 15 |
| As with a tuneful measure. | |
| |
| And dream not that such humdrum ways | |
| Fold naught of nature’s charm around him; | |
| The mystery of soundless days | |
| Hath sought for him and found him. | 20 |
| |
| He hides within his simple brain | |
| An instinct innocent and holy, | |
| The music of a wood-bird’s strain,— | |
| Not blithe, nor melancholy, | |
| |
| But hung upon the calm content | 25 |
| Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossom— | |
| An unecstatic ravishment | |
| Born in a rustic bosom. | |
| |
| He knows the moods of forest things, | |
| He feels, in his own speechless fashion, | 30 |
| For helpless forms of fur and wings | |
| A mild paternal passion. | |
| |
| Within his horny hand he holds | |
| The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel; | |
| Their bushy mother storms and scolds, | 35 |
| But knows no sense of peril. | |
| |
| The dormouse shares his crumb of cheese, | |
| His homeward trudge the rabbits follow; | |
| He finds, in angles of the trees, | |
| The cup-nest of the swallow. | 40 |
| |
| And through this sympathy, perchance, | |
| The beating heart of life he reaches | |
| Far more than we who idly dance | |
| An hour beneath the beeches. | |
| |
| Our science and our empty pride, | 45 |
| Our busy dream of introspection, | |
| To God seem vain and poor beside | |
| This dumb, sincere reflection. | |
| |
| Yet he will die unsought, unknown, | |
| A nameless head-stone stand above him, | 50 |
| And the vast woodland, vague and lone, | |
| Be all that ’s left to love him. | |
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