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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Forest Pine
Work rating: Low

A hundred autumns fallen in fire
 To dust and mould
 Have faded from their perished gold
 To throne thee higher,
 O Titan pine, that soarest straight
 From ground to sky without a mate,
 Like one desire.

 Dark is the hollow as a cup
 Of shadow immense,
 Of daylight--daunting dimness, whence
 Thou springest up
 Far into light, to take thy fill
 Of splendour, solitary in still
 Magnificence.

 Leaves of the low brake hide a stir
 Of small soft things:
 Life, busy in flit of secret wings
 And slinking fur,
 Pricks buried seeds that upward thrust,
 And green through germinating dust
 Triumphant stings.

 But thou, that seemest earth to scorn
 And air to claim,
 With all thy plumy spire aflame
 And crest upborne
 In the blue air, so far, so high,
 As if the silence of the sky
 About thee came,

 Thou hidest all the sappy stream
 That in thee swells;
 Motionless fibre nothing tells:
 And thou dost seem
 To tower in glorious ignorance
 Of earth`s small stir and chafe, a trance,
 A soaring dream!

 And in a trance thou holdest me
 With bated will;
 And I am still, as thou art still,
 My spirit free,
 My body charm--dissolved to naught
 But the vibration of a thought,
 If thought could be.

 O hush! within the blood is felt
 An airy fear,
 A faltering; and the heart can hear
 The silence melt
 To something frailer than a sound
 Borne from the wide horizon`s bound
 To the inward ear.

 Slowly, ah! slowly, a hush begins,
 A trembling, where
 Those branches sleep on golden air,
 And gradual wins
 A voice, a music, a long surge,
 Sweet as a song, sad as a dirge,
 Sighed out like prayer!

 The singer knows not what he sings.
 A lonely sound
 Comes trembling through him from profound
 Aerial springs.
 The songs, the sighs, the world exiled,
 Seek him and in his heart--throbs wild
 Still their wild wings.
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