On a Cone of the Big Trees

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 bringst 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 friends the poets table:     The latest spawn the press hath cast,     The modern popes, the later Byrons,     Why, een the best may not outlast     Thy poor relation Sempervirens.     Thy sire saw the light that shone     On Mohammeds 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.