I saw how he would come each night and wait
An hour or more beside that broken gate--
Just stand, and stare across the road with dim,
Grey eyes. Nothing was there but an old pine tree,
Cut down and sawn in lengths; and absently
He answered questions that I put to him.
He spoke as if some horrid deed were done--
Murder--no less--it seemed to be;
A week before, under his very eyes,
A gang of men had slain a tree.
The pine was planted seventy years ago
To celebrate his birth,
It had a right, he said, to live and grow,
And then into the earth,
By a mild and understanding law,
To pass with nature's quiet burial.
But they had come, those men, with axe and saw,
And killed it like a criminal,
And with the hangman's rope about its neck,
It swayed a moment, then with heavy sound,
Dropped with a crash of branches to the ground.