The Sycamores

In the outskirts of the village     On the river's winding shores     Stand the Occidental plane-trees,     Stand the ancient sycamores.     One long century hath been numbered,     And another half-way told     Since the rustic Irish gleeman     Broke for them the virgin mould.     Deftly set to Celtic music     At his violin's sound they grew,     Through the moonlit eves of summer,     Making Amphion's fable true.     Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!     Pass in erkin green along     With thy eyes brim full of laughter,     And thy mouth as full of song.     Pioneer of Erin's outcasts     With his fiddle and his pack-     Little dreamed the village Saxons     Of the myriads at his back.     How he wrought with spade and fiddle,     Delved by day and sang by night,     With a hand that never wearied     And a heart forever light,     Still the gay tradition mingles     With a record grave and drear     Like the rollic air of Cluny     With the solemn march of Mear.     When the box-tree, white with blossoms,     Made the sweet May woodlands glad,     And the Aronia by the river     Lighted up the swarming shad,     And the bulging nets swept shoreward     With their silver-sided haul,     Midst the shouts of dripping fishers,     He was merriest of them all.     When, among the jovial huskers     Love stole in at Labor's side     With the lusty airs of England     Soft his Celtic measures vied.     Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake     And the merry fair's carouse;     Of the wild Red Fox of Erin     And the Woman of Three Cows,     By the blazing hearths of winter     Pleasant seemed his simple tales,     Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends     And the mountain myths of Wales.     How the souls in Purgatory     Scrambled up from fate forlorn     On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder     Slyly hitched to Satan's horn.     Of the fiddler who at Tara     Played all night to ghosts of kings;     Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies     Dancing in their moorland rings!     Jolliest of our birds of singing     Best he loved the Bob-o-link.     "Hush!" he'd say, "the tipsy fairies!     Hear the little folks in drink!"     Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle,     Singing through the ancient town,     Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant     Hath Tradition handed down.     Not a stone his grave discloses;     But if yet his spirit walks     Tis beneath the trees he planted     And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks.     Green memorials of the gleeman!     Linking still the river-shores,     With their shadows cast by sunset     Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores!     When the Father of his Country     Through the north-land riding came     And the roofs were starred with banners,     And the steeples rang acclaim,     When each war-scarred Continental     Leaving smithy, mill,.and farm,     Waved his rusted sword in welcome,     And shot off his old king's-arm,     Slowly passed that august Presence     Down the thronged and shouting street;     Village girls as white as angels     Scattering flowers around his feet.     Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow     Deepest fell, his rein he drew:     On his stately head, uncovered,     Cool and soft the west-wind blew.     And he stood up in his stirrups,     Looking up and looking down     On the hills of Gold and Silver     Rimming round the little town,     On the river, full of sunshine,     To the lap of greenest vales     Winding down from wooded headlands,     Willow-skirted, white with sails.     And he said, the landscape sweeping     Slowly with his ungloved hand     "I have seen no prospect fairer     In this goodly Eastern land."     Then the bugles of his escort     Stirred to life the cavalcade:     And that head, so bare and stately     Vanished down the depths of shade.     Ever since, in town and farm-house,     Life has had its ebb and flow;     Thrice hath passed the human harvest     To its garner green and low.     But the trees the gleeman planted,     Through the changes, changeless stand;     As the marble calm of Tadmor     Mocks the deserts shifting sand.     Still the level moon at rising     Silvers o'er each stately shaft;     Still beneath them, half in shadow,     Singing, glides the pleasure craft;     Still beneath them, arm-enfolded,     Love and Youth together stray;     While, as heart to heart beats faster,     More and more their feet delay.     Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar,     On the open hillside justice wrought,     Singing, as he drew his stitches,     Songs his German masters taught.     Singing, with his gray hair floating     Round a rosy ample face,     Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen     Stitch and hammer in his place.     All the pastoral lanes so grassy     Now are Traffic's dusty streets;     From the village, grown a city,     Fast the rural grace retreats.     But, still green and tall and stately,     On the river's winding shores,     Stand the occidental plane-trees,     Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores