What soul has swept your branches, cypress-tree,
That you should point so high;
That you, whose root among the graves may be,
Look ever to the sky?
Dark warden of the long-untended tomb
Seen o’er some mouldering wall,
Or set where fountained gardens are abloom
And roses blush and fall.
Scarcely the wind is voiceful as it sways
Your column, dusk, austere;
Scarcely the evening breeze that round you plays
Brings music to the ear.
Your earth-bound foot mortality retains
Imprisoned in the sod,
Your earth-freed spirit to that ether strains
Which is the breath of God.
The light o’er southern vineyards dying down
Smiles on the landscape still,
And lays the lengthening shadow of your crown
On many a Tuscan hill.
And, nearer home, where memory’s deathless sun
Enwraps some tear-sown mound,
Your shade, at day’s decline, O silent one,
Slants eastward on the ground.
By tomb or pleasance, convent-girdled height,
In countries far or near,
You bear a message from eternal light
To us whose souls are here.
O silent witness! dark where yonder sky
In saffron splendour burns,
’Tis but the shadow that on earth must lie,
The substance heavenward turns.
❦