Then there came a long hiatus, While I kept repeating Chips, Feeling the divine afflatus Oozing through my finger-tips. Gone and going hopelessly, So, in my accustom’d manner, Underneath my favourite tree, I began a mild havannah— ’Twas indeed my favourite station, For recruiting mind and body; p. 59Drinking draughts of inspiration, Alternate with whisky toddy. ’Twas an oak tree old and hoary. And my garden’s pride and glory; Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters, Mossy with a thousand winters. p. 59 Here I found the Muses’ fountain, And perceived my spirits mounting, And exclaim’d in accents burning, To the tree my eyes upturning, “Venerable tree and vast, Speak to me of ages past! Sylvan monarch of the wold, Tell me of the days of old! Did thy giant boughs o’er-arching View the Roman legions marching? Has the painted Briton stray’d Underneath thy hoary shade? Did some heathen oracle In thy knotty bosom dwell, As in groves of old Dodona, Or the Druid oaks of Mona? Dwelt the outlaw’d foresters Here in ‘otium cum dig.’ While the feather’d choristers In thy branches ‘hopp’d the twig?’ Help me, Nymph! Fawn! Hamadryad! One at once, or all the Triad.” Lo! a voice to my invoking! ’Twas my stupid gardener croaking, “Please, Sir, mayn’t I fall this tree, ’Cos it spoils the crops, you see: p. 60And the grass it shades and lumbers, And we shan’t have no cowcumbers. Some time it will fall for good, And the Missis wants the wood.” p. 60 Shock’d at such a scheme audacious, Faint, I gasp’d out, “Goodness gracious!” “Yes,” I said, “the tree must fall, ’Tis, alas! the lot of all; But no mortal shall presume To accelerate its doom. Rescued from thy low desires, It shall warm my poet fires. Let the strokes of fate subdue it, Let the axe of Time cut through it; When it must fall, let it fall, But, oh! never let me view it.” Seeing that my phrase exalted Fell upon his senses vainly, In my full career I halted, And I spoke my orders plainly. “Never seek to trim or lop it, Once for all I charge thee, drop it.” And I added, to my sorrow, “You shall ‘cut your stick’ to-morrow Know what that means, I suppose?” “Yes,” he said, “I thinks I does.” So I left him at this crisis, Left him to his own devices, Left him like the royal Vandal, Leaning on his old spade handle. Oh! those vulgar slang expressions,— How I smart for my transgressions! p. 61Judge my wrath, surprise, and horror, When I rose upon the morrow, To behold my tree in
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